


An Unmade Bed

by fourfreedoms



Category: Actor RPF, Equilibrium, House M.D., Life as a House (2001), She's the Man (2006), Supernatural
Genre: 5 Things, Angst, Case Fic, Crack, Experimentation, First Time, M/M, Porn, Pre-Series, Sexual Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-20
Updated: 2008-05-20
Packaged: 2017-11-05 16:20:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/408480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourfreedoms/pseuds/fourfreedoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story of Samuel Winchester’s Gay Sexual History, and how Dean, a minor but important character, became a hero in the final chapter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Feel Like An Island, But You Bought the Tickets To The Goddamn Movie

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to nomelon for dutifully setting me straight when I was going off course, and also to balefully for making sure that this story was worth reading. Thanks also goes to everybody who participated on the poll to see who Sam should sleep with. I guess you'll just have to read it to see what I did with the results.  
> -February 19th, 2008

Sam had been asked to tutor him in bio. He recalled the moment—standing in the buzzing fluorescent lighting of the science block, bag slung over one shoulder, as Ms. Merchant approached him for extra-credit—and wondered what the hell he’d been thinking. He should have said there were conflicts with debate or soccer practice. Anything to avoid _this_. He’d had no reason to say yes, Sam Monroe and his attitude were famous. 

But Sam _had_ said yes, in a moment of tremendous narcissism that maybe he could get Monroe to care, and found himself in Monroe’s messy room on a Tuesday evening, trying not to disturb any piles of clutter, while the boy himself lay on his bed and very visibly contemplated getting high. 

And thus ensued two hours every week of ardent frustration and wasted time. Every time, he sat awkwardly in the black office chair at Monroe’s dusty desk, bored enough to amuse himself by twirling around on the casters. Monroe said he didn’t have time for preppy college-bound boys, and called him Samuel rather than Sam just to get under his skin. Monroe also had no desire to pass bio. And Sam knew he could. Sam had seen Monroe’s scores on the 12th grade AMCs that he’d been allowed to take as a sophomore. Sam couldn’t hope for those scores in his wildest dreams _now_ , half a semester through senior BC-calc. His malaise itched at Sam, all that talent, and Monroe just lay prone on his bed, shoes still on, and popped gum, while Sam desperately tried to engage him. 

“It’s not gonna work, Samuel,” Monroe told him, lips spread around an obscenely wide grin. Sam looked down at the cheap binder in his lap, felt his cheeks heat. Monroe was pretty in a way that almost made mockery of his height and the breadth of his shoulders. Although his murky dyed hair, piercings, and chipped black nail-polish left something to be desired. 

Sam tapped his paper with his pencil and sighed. This was their fourth session. Monroe didn’t attempt to make Sam do his homework or anything, but he'd made it clear that there would be no studying and no learning. Ever. Sam could have been working on college apps or SAT prep, which he got precious enough time for already, instead he was here, contemplating what Monroe’s cigarettes would look like shoved up his nose. He said as much. Monroe spread his palms and resettled on the bed. Sam considered flinging the heavy seventh edition Reese and Campbell bio textbook at his head. 

“I’m only doing this because my mother would string me up by my thumbs if I didn’t,” Monroe said finally, as if Sam's agitation deserved some response. “But I don’t give a fuck about that class.” 

Sam stared at him blankly, and tried to ask why he was so determined to crash and burn, but couldn't find the words. They spent fifteen minutes locked in a desperate staring contest. 

“What’s your natural hair color?” Sam asked, setting his binder aside. 

Monroe’s face tightened in a frown. “What?” 

Sam blew out a breath. “You deaf?” 

Monroe made a noise in the back of his throat and carded his fingers through the inky strands. They stood up in awkward spikes, purple and blue streaks visible. “Blond.” 

Sam laughed. “You look like a blond.” 

“Fuck you.” It was said dully, but Monroe chucked his pillow at Sam’s head. 

“Yeah?” Sam replied, watching the pillow sail harmlessly by several feet off course. “Maybe after we go over the Krebs cycle.” 

Monroe gaped at him, lashes dark around his wide eyes. Sam couldn’t quite believe he’d said it either. He coughed and set the binder back in his lap. It was easier to pretend the whole conversation hadn’t happened, going over the electron transport chain and dark reactions and drawing little diagrams while Monroe watched listlessly, chin propped up on his fist. 

“Your math’s wrong,” Monroe said at their fifth session, pointing out the errors in Sam’s calculations. 

“Are you telling me you know this shit and deliberately fuck up the tests?” 

“Nah,” Monroe laughed, blowing a bubble with his gum. “I only actually took one test, Samuel. I cut all the rest.” 

Sam put his head in his hands. “You must be joking!”

“Nope,” Monroe replied, almost proudly. 

Sam’s lifted his head and met Monroe’s gaze. “Why?” 

Monroe looked taken aback, like no one had bothered to ask him that before. He struggled to say something and then shrugged. 

Monroe started canceling sessions after that, said he had other shit to do. Sam figured he was probably off getting high somewhere. Well, fine. It was a huge waste of time anyway, since Monroe knew the material already and simply didn’t give a damn. Sam saw him around a sometimes, talking to that slick rich retarded fuck, Josh, the one who dealt drugs. Monroe stood next to him, lighter sliding over and under his fingers like quicksilver, as he exhaled a curling ribbon of smoke. Not even Dean could pull off a trick like that. 

Sam tried to put Monroe out of his head after that. He had work to do, too much these days now that Dad had insisted on an even sterner work out regimen in exchange for letting him play soccer. His life seemed to be endlessly bricked up between school and the obligations he had at home. 

They went hunting down on the beach—sirens. It was an easy enough kill, and Dad and Dean left, dragging a Siren corpse by her ankles, while Sam remained on the beach, watching the water crash into the sand. 

“Don’t get into trouble, Sammy!” Dean called back over his shoulder and Sam knew the implication was hurry up. 

Sam waited a few minutes out of spite before going back up into the copse of cypress trees. He ran into a breathless Monroe just as he was climbing to the steps up the cliff leading back to the parking lot. 

“Whoa,” Sam said, reaching out to steady him with his hand. “You shouldn’t be out here!” 

“Could say the same for you,” Monroe gasped, lighter flicking through his fingers, hand trembling enough to almost drop it. Sam could see the glassiness of his eyes, the bruised look of his mouth, and the haphazard set of his clothes. 

“What happened to you?” 

Monroe inhaled and pulled out a squashed pack of cigarettes, tapping on the box until one fell into his palm. He didn’t talk until he’d taken several drags. “Almost made a bad decision.” 

Sam wrinkled his nose at the combination of salty ocean air and smoke. He could tell from the hard set of Monroe’s jaw that he wasn’t going to say anything else, so Sam offered him a ride back to his house. Monroe’s lips twitched like he wanted to say no, but eventually he nodded. 

They walked in silence to the parking lot where Dean was waiting, the Impala idling near the exit. Dad was already long gone in the truck. Dean raised his eyebrows at Monroe, but didn’t say anything. Sam was glad, the last thing he needed was Dean unleashing 20-offensive-questions. The faded blank expression on Monroe’s face scared him a little and Dean's tactlessness was trying at the best of times. 

Monroe climbed stiffly out of the car when they pulled up in front of his glitzy house. Dean jerked his head after him. “Walk him to the door, Sam.” 

“What? Dean?” Sam was caught off guard, but he clambered out after the other boy, jogging to catch up. Monroe paused by the front step and scuffed the toe of his boot against the ground. “Um, Good night.” 

Sam cleared his throat. “Take care of yourself, all right?” 

He turned, heading down the walk, but a strong grip on his wrist pulled him back. Monroe stretched up to press his mouth to Sam’s. He tasted of menthol cigarettes and heartache, and he ran the barest hint of tongue over the seam of Sam’s lips. Sam’s mouth tingled, and he wrapped his arms around Monroe’s waist without thinking about it. Dean honked and they sprang apart, breathing hard. The porch light wasn’t on, and the streets of the nice neighborhood weren’t lit. There was no way Dean could see them, but he couldn’t prevent the flush from lighting up the apples of his cheeks and the tips of his ears. 

Monroe fumbled his key in the lock and slammed the door behind him, leaving Sam wondering what the hell had just happened. When he got back to the car, he could see his own confusion echoed on Dean’s face. Sam took a shaky breath, and Dean snorted a laugh and shook his head. Sam sank down in the passenger seat. 

It was awkward between Sam and Monroe after that, but they started meeting up in Monroe’s room again, once a week. Sam did his homework and Monroe read. Laurence Sterne, Henry Fielding, Trollope, Balzac, George Elliot, Jerome K. Jerome. He read aloud occasionally and Sam paused to listen. He liked the way Monroe read, smooth cadence that never tripped or faltered. Sam asked about his choices in literature and Monroe shrugged. “They’re on the Observer’s Top 100 Greatest Novels of all time. I just wondered if I agreed with them.”

Sam laughed weakly. Monroe always surprised him. “Do you?” 

“Well,” Monroe hedged, “there’s a lot of English writers on this list, so I guess it’s a little biased.” 

Sam carefully put his homework away, and sat down on the bed. Monroe looked up at him, eyes wide, and Sam slowly leaned in to brush their lips together. Monroe’s copy of _Daniel Deronda_ got crushed between their chests. He laughed into Sam’s mouth, and sunk his teeth into Sam’s lower lip. Monroe’s family was out of the house otherwise Sam never would’ve attempted it. 

He pressed Monroe down into the sheets, rucked up his ratty black t-shirt, and traced designs over Monroe’s pale, perfect skin with his tongue. Sam guessed he burned as easily as Dean did. He ran light fingertips over Monroe’s nipples and ground his thigh against the hint of an erection in the other boy’s pants. 

Monroe moaned, lips shiny with Sam’s spit. They rutted against each other on the bed, making out, and exploring with light touches, every one loaded with hesitance. Monroe pulled off Sam's shirt and drinking in Sam’s chest and abdomen in wonder. Sam blushed horribly red, and looked away. “Jesus, you soccer jocks!” Monroe was clearly fascinated

Sam didn’t correct him about how he’d really built the muscle. They weren’t about to have that conversation. Instead, he stripped himself naked while Monroe did the same, and then, taking initiative, wrapped his fist around Monroe's cock. Monroe bucked and cursed, greedy for it, hips lifting against Sam’s grip. Sam smiled, and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the spot behind Monroe’s ear, where his hair was already starting to curl with sweat. 

The way Monroe flushed and looked at him, Sam figured it out. “You’re a virgin.” 

Monroe threw an arm up over his eyes. “Yes, Samuel.” 

He didn’t look quite right then, his face pinched and tight. Sam pulled back and asked him what was wrong. 

Monroe sighed. “I almost slept with some guy.” 

“Yeah?” Sam didn’t understand why that was such a big deal. 

Monroe pulled his arm away from his face. “For money, okay.” 

He told Sam it was the only way Josh would guarantee his supply of drugs. The cops showed up and he’d had to make a run for it. That was the night Sam had run into him. His grip was tight around Sam’s wrist. Sam imagined crushing Josh’s throat, the way his eyes would go dark as he struggled for air. But he couldn’t believe how stupid Monroe was—that he was willing to do that. 

“Can you just—just touch me?” Monroe asked when he’d finished, eyes squeezed tight. 

Sam hesitated. “Are you—do you—is that what you want?” 

Monroe’s long-fingered hands found their way into Sam’s pants. He pulled Sam down on top of him and nodded. Sam took his time. Monroe was only his third sexual encounter, and the first time with a guy. He knew the basic dos and don’ts, but he was nervous. He couldn’t believe the cocky caustic little fucker hadn’t laid half the school already. 

It was easy to jerk Monroe off, to tongue his nipples and watch him twist beneath his touch. To whisper "don’t ever do that again" imperceptibly into his skin as Monroe sank black-tipped fingers into Sam’s unruly hair. Monroe’s hips rose off the bed; his eyes dark and swallowed by pupil. He cursed and growled when Sam pressed on the sensitive vein on the underside of his dick. His fingers left scratches on Sam’s skin, and he muffled his moans into Sam’s mouth. When he came, it was with a sob, and before Sam could ask if he was okay, he’d flipped them over, straddling Sam’s hips and grinding down. Sam's cock was heavy and insistent inside his boxers. 

Monroe looked down at him, like he was figuring something out, and reached down to shove off Sam’s pants. “I want you to fuck me.” 

Sam tried arguing, but Monroe applied that iron will that had lead to weeks of silence to him.

“But I’ve never—you might—”

“I don’t care.”

Prep was slow—a lot stumbling and hissing, and finger-shaped bruises raising up on Sam’s biceps. Monroe slid down on Sam’s dick after what felt like hours, thighs gripping his hips tight. Sam was amazed at how good it was, how tight, how warm. Not so wet or soft like he was used to, more of a steady unyielding press of flesh—one that wrenched sensation out of him. Monroe took time to adjust, filth poured of his mouth. Sam leaned up on his elbows and tugged lightly at the stud in Monroe’s ear with his teeth. Monroe let out a breath and started bucking against Sam hard. 

Sam Monroe didn’t let anybody touch him, get past his walls, even here. They bit at each other, it turned rough. 

“Harder,” Monroe begged, pulling at Sam’s shoulders. Sam flipped them over, asked a million times if it was good, if he liked it. Monroe swore at him, cheek pressed into the pillow, head rocking with every thrust. Sam strained against him, tried to get in deeper.

“Oh, Jesus,” Monroe breathed, gripped tightly at him, and came, painting their stomachs with thick salty fluid. There were tears in his eyes, but a smile on his face. Sam froze, fingers brushing through the water gathering at Monroe's eyes. He looked at in wonder, and felt his orgasm crash over him. 

Afterwards they lay side by side on the bed. Monroe smoked and Sam made a judgmental face at him. Monroe blew smoke in his face and laughed when Sam coughed. He talked about the crazy girl down the street, how she always got into the shower with him, and he didn’t know how to feel about her. Sam listened, chin propped on his fist. Monroe still called him Samuel, and Sam tickled him breathless until he agreed to stop. 

“Is there anybody you want?” Monroe asked, his hand tight on Sam’s dick. Sam couldn’t breathe. Monroe stroked him and Sam’s eyes rolled back in his head. He thought of Dean, his green eyes, his laugh, the way they’d wrestled over a poker game, thighs tangled together and chests pressed tight. Monroe mouthed at his collarbone, teeth sharp against his skin. Sam could see Dean’s mouth, red, curved, sharp canines sinking into the full flesh when he tried to restrain a grin. He came with a curse. Monroe’s lips curled up into a smile. 

“Ah, I think that answers my question.” 

Sam skin flamed and he rolled away. “I was going to suck your dick next time, but I’ve reconsidered.” 

Monroe just laughed and leered at him as Sam pulled his clothes on and called Dean to pick him up. 

“You know, you never answered me, way back when,” Sam pointed out a few weeks later. He’d been bargaining sex for exams. Monroe got a better score on the last biology test than he did. “Why do you just say ‘Fuck it’ to school work?” 

Monroe looked down at his hands. “I guess, to get back at my dad.” 

Sam laughed. “Funny, that’s exactly why I study so hard.” 

“You’re a freak,” Monroe told him, as he sucked down cigarette smoke. 

Sam coughed exaggeratedly and threw his pants at him. “You’re going to die young.” 

Monroe set the pants aside, his expression penetrating, simultaneously knowing and mysterious. “And so, I fear, are you.”


	2. I'll Be The Spiderman To Your James Dean

He’d just gotten big, when Sam saw him—Spiderman out that April, and the theater had been booked for months. Sam didn’t get to go with his buddies until May. They’d been good superhero films, blown Joel Schumacher’s last _Batman_ movies out of the water. Willem Dafoe was a genius choice for the Green Goblin, and Sam imagined Dean sitting in a theater somewhere and agreeing with him. It had been eight months since they’d talked. Sam had no idea where he was; he’d been swallowed by the flyover zone. 

But he wasn’t thinking about Dean. He was staring at James Franco. 

Sam's study group, Advanced Latin 250: Roman Historians, had biked over to Café Borrone in Menlo Park, a hike from their dorms out on Lagunita, but the best coffee and sandwiches around. And there was James Franco standing at the counter, ordering a roast beef sandwich and an iced tea, as normal as you please. Nobody besides their group seemed to care or even notice. He was sweaty and mussed from the gym, dark blond curls sticking to his forehead and the nape of his neck. His white t-shirt and green exercise shorts shifted with the play of his muscles when he moved. He was shorter than Sam expected.

“How does somebody like that wind up in the Bay Area?” Eric asked, tapping his lip with a ball-point pen. 

Lita, in clear Franco awe, said, “He’s from Palo Alto, went to the high school just off of Embarcadero near the football field.” 

Sam didn’t say anything, just continued ticking off names on his paper. “Are we expected to know Livy’s account of the rape of Lucretia by heart or can we paraphrase?” 

He pretended to study hard, to memorize passages from Livy book one. He noticed when the actor sat down facing Sam at a table a few feet away. Their gazes met, Sam’s finger paused on the page. Little laugh lines wrinkled at the corner of James’s eyes and Sam dropped his own back down to the lined paper of his notebook. 

He pointedly turned his attention elsewhere for the rest of the session. When they’d all finished, dishes scraped clean and drinks sucked down to the last watery dregs, they gathered their stuff back into their bags and headed out to their bikes. Sam waved to them and went inside Kepler's, the bookshop next door. They had a good selection even if the clerks were overwhelmingly snooty. He stood in the literature section, running his fingers over the glossy cover of _Absolom Absolom_. He didn’t have a lot of money left over for books, but maybe today…

He felt the presence at his back when it was within five feet of him—some habits died hard. It was an innocuous gaze lit upon him, but he couldn’t help being nervous. Sam wasn’t good at this part. He’d fumbled his way through relationships with girls, to the degree that Dean said it was a mercy he ever got laid. But then again, Dean’d never really known about Sam Monroe. 

“I had to read that in tenth grade; didn’t get past chapter one,” a voice said, soft in his ear. “I wasn’t much of a student, dropped out of college.” 

Sam turned, gathered up some courage from somewhere and said, “You look like you did all right.”

James laughed. His tongue slid out over his lips as he proffered his hand. “I’m James.” 

“I know.” 

James smirked, didn’t ask if Sam wanted to get out of there or what his name was. He tugged Sam by his wrist past the romance novels and into the cleaning closet. Sam found himself backed up against the wall, James’s teeth sunk into his lower lip and his palm firm over Sam’s heart. Sam sighed. Ten minutes ago he was thinking of books and how much he wanted that new Umberto Eco novel, and in this moment his dick was hard in his pants, and he had an actor who pulled down at least six-figures pressed against him, tugging his shirt up around his arm pits. 

There was a whirlwind of movement, lube out and condom on, jeans tugged down—all performed with the smooth practice of somebody who’d done this too many times before. And then James was reaching behind Sam’s waist and down, fingers sticky and cool and pressing in against the resistance of Sam's body, because Sam had never done that before. He hiked Sam’s thigh over his hip and worried his ear lobe with his teeth, Sam’s back arched away from the wall. 

James fingers scissored in and out, the knuckles grazing sensitive nerve-endings as he talked him through it, like he might with a skittish horse. 

“Look so pretty and wrecked pressed against the wall,” he told Sam, forcing moans out of him. 

Sam had a meeting with a TA in forty-five minutes. He didn’t care if he was late. James's fingers slid out of him too fast and Sam held his breath and gripped hard at the James’s shoulder as they were replaced with his dick. 

“Relax,” James told him. 

“Can’t,” Sam whispered. “Don’t know how.” 

James grabbed both his wrists and slammed them against the plaster of the wall, punctuating it with a firm roll of his hips. “Relax.” 

He shuddered and moaned, leaned forward to draw James’s lower lip between his teeth. He choked, words and pleas stuck in his throat, all reduced to a groan as James set the pace, struck up against his prostate with every stroke, sucked at the tendon in his neck. Sam’s wrists were still pinned to the wall. He came before James even touched his dick. James chuckled, kissed his cheek. And maybe this was being taught how to surrender—a lesson his brother never could teach him. 

James followed soon after, face smooth, serene, brown eyes closed. Sam wished desperately that he would open them, but knew he had no right to ask. 

They straightened up awkwardly, there was some confusion about what to do with the condom, and for the first time they laughed together. 

Just as James was about to open the door, Sam stopped him. “Is this you, or are you acting?” 

James looked at him, expression neutral. “What about you?” he answered with another question and while Sam paused to think about it, James disappeared out the little closet door, leaving Sam behind. Sam shrugged his shoulders, and set his feelings aside, like he was locking them away in that tiny little closet. 

He spoke to Jessica Moore for the first time later that week in Tressater, over a salad and an iced tea. She was in his comparative religions course and he’d been eyeing her for a month now. She asked him if the seat across from him was taken. He and the rest of the club soccer boys he sat with froze. Jamie, the left midfielder, punched his shoulder. 

He left with her number, scrawled on the only scrap of paper he could find in short notice. He stared down at it, butterflies in his stomach. She was pretty, and smart, and he hadn’t felt this way about anybody since…well, it didn’t bear thinking about. He held it in his hand like it was something precious. As the sun shone through it, he noticed faded marks underneath the bold writing of Jess’s name. When he turned it over he found JAMES, 650-347-9534 hastily scrawled in pencil. It was the only piece of paper he’d had on him. It had been in the pocket of the same jeans he’d been wearing that day in Kepler’s.


	3. Some Men Have Greatness Thrust Upon Them, What Did You See When You Looked At Me?

Six months on the road. Six bare months after Jess’s funeral. Six months of gas stations and diners and motels and shitty libraries. It wasn’t as bad as he remembered—not as stressful as worrying about bombing his anthro final, or wondering how he was going to get through his French orals. Was it horrible that he didn’t care enough about hunting to get stressed out? Dean would think so. Dean thought it was a cop-out for Sam to have gone to school. Sam felt it was a cop-out to leave it, but he still couldn't find it in himself to go back.

His father had accused Sam of apathy his entire life—apathy and self-absorption and laziness. Dean wouldn’t dare tell him, but Sam still caught the look in his brother’s eye a time or two. And he knew Dean well enough to see it for what it was. Sam couldn’t contradict him. He couldn’t tell his brother, when Dean so vociferously thought he was fighting the good fight, and anything Sam had to say would only challenge it. 

So it was hard, and he found himself constantly waging an internal war, not to push back, not to give in to bile and frustration. He wanted a demon dead not because he thought it was his purpose, but because he needed answers, justice, peace. The rest was not his fight, and nobody could ever make it so. 

“You okay with coming back to California?” Dean asked as they crossed over the state line. 

“It’s the San Fernando Valley, Dean,” Sam sighed. “An entirely different world than the Bay Area.” 

Dean coughed and changed the subject, “So, what are you thinking? Haunted boarding school?” 

“Sure looks that way.” His reply was subdued.

Dean rolled his eyes. “What’s with you? You’ve been weird ever since you saw that article on the front page this morning. The one about drug patents.” 

“It’s nothing.” 

Dean attempted to push it. “Sammy—”

“So far we’ve got one girl in a coma, a locker room with frequent electrical surges, a boy swearing he saw “mutant” spiders, and a teacher who fell down the stairs,” Sam interrupted. “And then something weird about sex changes and twins and soccer.” Dean looked over at him and Sam raised his palms. “I dunno, man.” 

They decided to go the plainclothes detective route when they arrived at Illyria Academy. Although Dean bitched at Sam the whole way when he couldn't find that fuck ugly tie of his with the gold dots.

Sam had heard of Illyria back in the day. In the world of high school soccer, Illyria and their rival, Cornwall, were kind of famous. He hadn’t realized just how damn professional they were until he watched them run drills up and down the field like a well-oiled machine. Dean yawned and tugged on the lapels of his suit. 

A boy darted up the center of the field, skin bare and browned by the sun, taller than the rest. He danced past the defenders, skipped over the ball in a move that would’ve made Maradona salivate, and then hammered it home into the net. The skins whooped and jumped on him, while the shirts grumbled good-naturedly. The keeper punted it back up the field but it listed to the left and rolled to Sam’s feet. 

He hooked it up with one dress-shoe shod foot, and juggled it up off his thigh, one, twice, three times before booting it back to the shirt’s offense. When he looked up the tall boy was staring at him, expression impenetrable. Sam supposed he did look a little strange, a man in a suit kicking the ball around like he was just another player. Sam quirked his mouth into a grin and shook his head. The other boy smiled back and the elegant line of his lips and high cheekbones were suddenly thrown into sharp contrast. Sam knew he was staring. 

Dean elbowed Sam’s side. “I’m going to flag down the coach.”

There wasn’t quite enough air in his lungs, and he knew it wasn’t just from the strength of Dean’s elbow.

They talked with the coach for twenty minutes, before he nodded and turned back to the field. “Hastings!” he called with a voice like bullhorn and both brothers took a step back in surprise. A shirt peeled off from the team and jogged up, ponytail bobbing. 

It was a girl. On an all boys team. 

“What’s up, Coach?” she asked. 

Dean interrupted before the Coach could answer. “I’m Detective Taylor and this is Detective Fitzgerald. We’re investigating some of the special circumstances surrounding Evie O’Brien’s coma. We’ve been directed to you, to ask some questions.” 

She nodded her head. “Yeah, okay.” 

Thirty minutes later Dean looked ready to punch her. She’d babbled about her boyfriend, soccer, her asshole ex, how “Detective Fitzgerald” avoided split ends, and her twin brother. Apparently she’d masqueraded as her twin, Sebastian, to secure a space on the team. At least that cleared the whole cross-dressing gender bending business up.

“So about those unusual noises you heard, Ms. Hastings—” Sam tried to insert himself into the conversation. 

“What? Oh right!” She nodded again, enthusiastically. She told them they should talk to her boyfriend, Duke (Dean snickered behind his hand when he heard the name), and then started going off about Junior league and deb balls. Sam had no clue what she was talking about. 

She turned and waved back to the field, practice was just breaking up. “Hey, Duke, c’mere!”

It was the tall boy with the smooth skin and the pretty sculpted face. He ran over in long loping strides. “Yeah, what’s going on?” 

“They want to know about that whole Evie thing…”

Duke wasn’t helpful either, but he knew it. He kept glancing at Sam and then at the cheery girl next to him as he related what he knew. It didn’t seem like much. Sam and Dean threw up their hands and thought maybe it wasn’t their kind of thing. 

At lunch, Dean read over the notepad he’d taken notes. “Blah blah and then during soccer initiation blah blah we made the rookies strip naked, and then the sprinklers went off.” He sighed. “You think it’s anything?” 

“I don’t even know, from what I could actually understand of what Viola said, it doesn’t look like our kind of thing.” 

“Viola? Her name was _Vi-o-la_?” Dean questioned, lifting his iced tea to his lips.

“His name was _Duke_!” Dean snorted his tea through his nose and Sam shook his head. “I guess we just wait to see if anything happens.” 

They were called back to the campus when four different witnesses swore they saw a girl pulled through a wall and land on the ground, two stories below on the other side. No, she didn’t jump out the window. No, she didn’t fall out either. She was definitely pulled. They got there in time to survey the body, but before the cops arrived to spill their cover. If she’d been thrown out a window, whoever had done it had managed to chuck her sideways at the same time, and from the spread eagle splay of her limbs, Sam didn’t think she’d jumped either. 

When they saw the red and blue flashing lights they left quickly. So maybe it was their kind of thing. They’d be back the next day. 

It was the weekend, so the students were milling around in groups, hanging out with their friends. They interviewed the four witnesses who couldn’t tell them much other than that Charlotte Lee had been sucked through the wall. They didn’t know of any similarities between her and Evie either, other than their sex. Sam had spent some time late the night before researching Illyria High School, but nothing of any note had happened at the school since it’s founding in 1963, except for maybe the senior prank that had blown up the fountain on the quad, but there hadn’t been any deaths from that. 

They split up after the interviews because Sam had to use the restroom and Dean wanted to check out the girls’ dorm common room where the incident had happened. Sam hoped that his warning look had been enough to keep Dean from doing anything stupid. He wasn’t holding his breath. 

He ran into Duke on the way back. He sat on a bench, running shoes on and covered in a fine sheen of sweat. His remarkable gray eyes troubled, forehead furrowed, and hands clasped tight. He barely noticed when Sam sat down beside him. 

“What’s up?” 

Duke shrugged. “Not much, CCS is coming up, so I’m training hard.” 

Sam nodded and looked out over the manicured lawns of the Illyria campus. “You heard about Charlotte?” Duke looked down at his hands, even white teeth sunk into his lips and nodded mutely. Sam furrowed his brows. The kid almost looked guilty. Sam filed that in the back of his mind. “Pretty weird stuff, huh?”

Duke shrugged again. “Uh, yeah. If you believe that stuff.” 

Sam looked down at his watch. Dean was probably waiting for him. “Well,” he got to his feet, “if you hear anything, here’s my number.” Sam hastily scrawled his name and number on a diner receipt and handed it over. 

Duke looked up at the paper in front of his face and reached up to take it, color slowly rushing up into his face. Sam’s lips quirked, and he waved and walked off to meet Dean. Dean said the EMF had been going crazy, so he was guessing poltergeist. Sam agreed with that. They weren’t sure of their next move.

“Stakeout?” Dean asked, when he met up with Sam. 

“Ugh, we’d be babysitting this place constantly!” Sam glared at him. “And don’t think I don’t know the only reason you’re considering it is so that you can mack on the high school girls!”

Dean laughed and suggested looking up the school’s blueprints at the town hall. Sam thought it was a good idea. They busied themselves at town hall for a while, but decided to leave when Dean’s stomach started rumbling. 

It was a short detour to the hotel to change out of the sticky uncomfortable suits, Dean hopping up and down as he attempted to divest himself of the dress pants. Sam snorted with laughter and picked the puddle of fabric off the floor to fold it neatly. When he looked up, Dean’s gaze was inscrutable. 

He set the pants aside. “What?” 

Dean shook it away. “Nothing.” 

Dean wanted pizza, so they went to Cesario’s, a place near campus. Dean grumbled to Sam when he saw how full it was of high school students. The waitress was kind enough to give them a table away from the girls’ volleyball team who were currently redefining the word shrieking. A shifting crowd of teenagers shoved its way through the door. They had spoken with some of them, and Sam recognized almost all of them as boys on the Armadillo’s soccer team. Viola spotted them as they walked past to get to a large table in the back. 

“Hey, detectives, you look different!” she said. Duke stood behind her, eyes focused somewhere else across the room. 

Dean shrugged, his amulet swaying on his chest. “We can’t wear the suits all the time.” 

“Hey, Duke,” Sam said. Duke nodded and smiled. Viola said their goodbyes and the couple left to go sit with their friends. 

Dean shot him a look. “Macking on the high school girls, you say? You hypocrite!” 

Sam looked up from his pizza, startled. “What?”

“Like you aren’t teasing that poor kid, Duke.” Dean threw his napkin at him. “You always did have a thing for the pretty ones.” 

“Shut up, man.” 

“How’s Sam Monroe doing these days?” Dean continued, cheerily tongue in cheek. 

Sam bit savagely into his pizza before answering, “Like I fucking know.” 

“Hah, you can try and pull that one on me, little bro, but I don’t buy it! You never forget your first love, especially not a giant girl like you.”

Sam set his slice down, and looked at Dean’s left hand resting on the table, relaxed and big and capable. No, he would never forget. 

“Sam’s gotten engaged,” Sam finally said, rolling and unrolling his napkin. 

Dean leaned back in his seat. “Whoa, to that crazy girl who was always getting in the shower with him?” 

Sam laughed, surprised that Dean remembered her. “Yeah.” 

“Hey, at least he knew it was a sure thing.” 

Sam rolled his eyes. "Yes, I'm sure that's why he asked her to marry her."

Dean picked up his straw wrapper, and tied a knot in the center. _If you pull it apart and the knot comes out, someone’s thinking of you_ , Sam had instructed when they were living in Tacoma, two weeks before Dean’s fifteenth birthday. Dean tugged on both ends of the straw wrapper and the knot slid out. 

Dean chuckled. “Hell yeah, I bet you it’s that girl in South Bend. You know the one with those killer green eyes, and those tits like perfect handfuls?” Sam looked at the ripped pieces of straw wrapper and shook his head. 

They finished their pizza and moved to the unoccupied pool tables. It was hot under the light and Dean shucked his leather jacket after only a few moments. He lined up his shot and whistled as he split two stripes and sunk a solid. Sam felt suffocated in his hoodie, so he tugged it up over his head. 

Dean was looking pointedly at him when he tossed the sweater aside. “I know you only do that so you can show off your abs.” 

“What?” Sam replied, hunching in on himself. “I do not!” 

Dean stuck out his tongue. “Whatever, Princess, it’s your go.” 

Sam rolled his eyes and put in three stripes. He was just lining up his next shot, bending over the pool table, when they were swarmed by Viola’s group. He shanked the shot, and the cue ball glanced weakly off the ball he’d been trying to put in the corner pocket. 

“You guys are good—you must have a lot of time on your hands,” Viola said, picking the purple solid right up off the table. Dean made a noise in the back of his throat and Sam started laughing. 

“What?” she looked up, wide-eyed. 

“You’ve ruined the game now,” Dean told her, voice choked. 

“Whatever, Dean, it’s fine.” Sam nudged his side and reached under the table to gather the balls up. Duke was staring at him. Sam cocked his head. “Do you wanna play?” 

“What?” Duke said, too abruptly. “I mean—uh—I—don’t know how.” 

Viola turned to Duke in surprise. “What? Yes, you do! You play in the rec room all the time!” 

Duke shook his head and backed up, stumbling all over himself. Dean looked at Sam, with raised 'I-told-you-so' brows. Two of the kids they recognized from the soccer field offered to play against them and Dean accepted. Sam elbowed him hard before he could suggest putting any money down. Not with high school kids. Not even with moneyed high school kids. 

Dean was taking his turn, lining up a bank shot when a blonde girl came to stand next to Sam. “Hi, I’m Olivia.” 

Sam smiled down at her awkwardly. “Um, nice to meet you.” 

“I’ve only seen him act like a complete idiot a couple of times.” She nodded her head at Duke. 

“What?” 

“He must really like you.” 

Sam gripped his pool cue tightly in both hands. “He doesn’t know me.” 

She slapped his shoulder and he looked down at her. “You know what I mean.” 

Sam bit his lip. It was his turn after that. They won the game, and the three they played after. Before Dean could do something stupid, like order the kids pitchers of beer for being such good sports, Sam dragged him back to the car. Dean was in a good mood, he liked playing pool just for the sake of it. Sam was still thinking about what Olivia had said. God, he felt like such a pervert, but he thought of how Duke’s lips quirked up in a smile, and the freckles over his shoulders. He banged his head against the car window. 

“What are you trying to do?” Dean shouted at him. “Break it?” 

Sam sighed and settled back in his seat. He went to bed that night troubled and slept poorly. At two in the morning, when he'd finally dropped off to sleep, his phone started ringing. It was on vibrate, and the persistent buzzing against the night stand was intolerable. He rolled over and picked it up with a grunt. 

“Hello?” he said, mouth full of cotton. 

“Detective Fitzgerald?” the voice cracked on the other end of the line. 

Sam sat straight up in bed. “Duke?” 

“I think—something’s wrong.”

Sam knew that tone of voice. It was the same one he had after a vision—freaked out, worried, desperate. He rolled out of bed with a thud and quickly began tugging his clothes on, phone held to his ear with his shoulder. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I don’t—I just feel like—whatever is happened to Charlotte and Evie, it’s going to happen again.” 

“Okay, can you tell me anything else?” He looked back over his shoulder and Dean was already up out of bed, pulling jeans up over his hips and tying his shoes. 

“I just—you said I should call if I needed to and—I don’t know how to deal with this.” 

“It’s fine, Duke, Detective Taylor and I are coming fast as possible.” 

The motel was only about five miles away from campus, but Dean shot down the little two lane road leading up to the gates at 50 miles per hour. He swerved into a parking space and they were off running towards the boys’ dorms. Duke had said he’d meet them near the bike cages and they sprinted there. Dean had one shotgun at the ready and a flash light in the other hand. 

“Duke?” Dean called. 

He stepped out of the shadows. “I think it’s going for the girls’ dorm again.” 

Dean nodded and tossed him a Berretta with the safety still on. “Do you know how to use one of these?” Duke breathed in once and shook his head. Dean groaned. “Just...don’t point it at anything you don’t want to shoot at, okay? It’s only salt, so you won’t do a lot of damage to anybody either way, but it’ll hurt like a bitch.” 

Duke nodded and they took off at a run for the girls’ dorms. Everything was quiet inside and locked up tight for the night. Sam had to get on his knees to prize apart the keycard system to scan them inside. It took five minutes. 

“Where are we going, Duke?” Sam asked once they were in. _The first floor bathroom._ He turned and looked back at the soccer player, fighting to keep his expression blank. What?

Duke made eye contact. “The first floor bathroom.” 

Sam blinked, Dean was already off, pushing past them, with Duke only a few steps behind. Sam set his shoulders and followed. The loud bang of gunshots echoed off the tiled walls of the bathroom. Sam slammed through the doors to see a ghostly outline disappear through the ceiling. 

Dean grabbed Duke’s arm. “What’s above the bathroom?” 

Duke shook his head. “Olivia and Manon’s room, I think.” 

They shoved out through the door and up the stairs to the second floor. They heard the sounds of furniture scraping across the floor, but it was coming from at least three directions. 

“It’s playing with us,” Sam said, glancing at each of the doorways the poltergeist might be behind. _Alicia Niven and Sarah McGee’s room._ This time, Sam didn’t question the presence of Duke’s voice in his mind, he just kicked the door in. Alicia was fast asleep on her bed, while Sarah floated off the ground, toes just inches from scraping the floor, struggling for air against the translucent hands that were crushing her windpipe. 

Dean shot again at the ghostly outline and it dissipated, dropping Sarah gasping to the floor. Her head connected with sickening thud on the scuffed pine floor. Sam bent to check on her. Her vitals were all good, and when he drew the flashlight across her eyes, her pupils followed. The sound of shrieking down the corridor burst against their eardrums. 

“Go,” she said, weakly, fingers still gripping her throat. They bolted back out down the corridor. 

Duke paled as they ran closer. “It’s Viola’s room!” 

The door swung inward this time, inviting them in. The room was empty, but they could see movement through the fluttering curtains. Viola struggled and fought for air, two stories above ground. 

“Holy shit,” Dean’s mouth dropped. 

Sam spotted the trophy on her desk, a large one, for soccer. “Duke, quick, what did Charlotte and Evie do in their spare time? Were they famous around campus for anything?” 

Duke’s eyes were cemented on Viola’s weakening struggles, one arm was hanging limply at her side. Broken, Sam assumed. “Duke!” He snapped his fingers in front of his eyes. Dean couldn’t shoot at the poltergeist without hitting Viola. 

“Um,” the soccer player started, “Evie got into Harvard early decision and Charlotte just won some scholarship for flute players.” 

Sam turned to Dean. “Go outside, to catch her when she falls. I know what this thing is.” 

He waited a few seconds more and started the ritual incantation of Visconti, hoping that Dean would get down there in time. If they waited much longer, she’d suffocate, but if he banished it too soon she’d surely break a leg. He spoke rapidly in Italian, one of the few exorcisms that they worked with that wasn’t in Latin. The poltergeist shrieked and began to loosen its hold on Viola. It started roaring back at Sam in Italian, but Sam continued on, pulling Duke to the ground with him when the bed rose off the floor and slammed against the wall, cheap wooden frame splintering. Books flew off the bookshelf and dumped themselves on the floor. 

“Sono Potente, Sono Libero!” Sam cried the ending of the incantation. The poltergeist’s silvery light blinked twice and went out. Viola dropped to the ground. Sam and Duke struggled to their feet, to look out the window. Dean held Viola clenched tightly in his arms, cellphone at his ear, dialing 911. Duke sighed, and dropped to his knees in relief. 

_What was that?_

Sam heard it in his head again. He waited for a moment before answering. “A poltergeist, one that feeds on the energy of success. The incantation to dispel it was written by the House of Visconti in Italy, and many assume it is the original text for the _Malleus Malificarum_.”

“The what?” Duke asked, weakly, supporting himself on the empty book case. 

Sam sighed. “It’s not important. We should go down and check on Viola.” 

Duke nodded and accepted the hand that Sam offered to pull himself off the floor. The ambulance was already down there by the time they made it to the first floor. Dean must have run with everything he had to catch Viola in time. He was talking with an EMT and Viola was getting an oxygen mask. Sarah McGee was lying on a backboard, while two techs gave her an IV. Dean nodded when he caught sight of Sam. Sam stood with Duke, a ways away from where they were strapping Viola down to the gurney and wheeling her into the ambulance. She laughed and joked, but Duke stayed awkwardly at Sam's side. 

“I—thanks,” he told Sam, cracking his knuckles. 

Sam smiled and started to say there wasn’t any need of thanks, but Duke leaned into him and brushed their lips together. 

“I—what are you doing?” Sam stepped away from him. “You’re in high school, we just saved your girlfriend’s life!”

“I’m eighteen,” he said weakly, looking embarrassed. He was shorter than Sam by five inches, but Sam could already tell from the tight grip Duke had on his forearm, that this kid wouldn’t back down without a fight. 

“You’re crazy, is what you are,” Sam told him. “And I have no idea why you want—” he was cut off by Duke’s mouth over his. Sam had no clue what he was doing or how his fingertips ended up hooked into Duke's belt loops

They stumbled back, fell against the prickly manicured grass, Duke’s hand fisted in Sam’s t-shirt. The lawn was wet, his clothes were sticking to his skin, but he was kissing Duke and gasping into his mouth when he thrust their hips together. They were in full view of the ambulance. His brother was out there somewhere, not forty feet away, and Sam had his fingers sunk into Duke’s hair and his teeth against the tender thin skin of Duke’s neck. His cell-phone buzzed and vibrated in his pocket and he could feel every breath that Duke took. This was not acceptable behavior on any level, but if he was waiting for the willpower to stop, it never came along. Duke rolled to his feet and Sam thought maybe that was it, maybe they were done and he could leave now without feeling like home-wrecking pedo. 

_Tell me you don’t want me_ , echoed in Sam’s head. 

"Don't...don't do that. It's creepy," Sam replied. 

"Tel me you don't want me," Duke repeated aloud, spacing the words out like he was talking to a child. 

“I’m going to regret this,” Sam whispered against Duke’s mouth, holding the other boy close. “Where’s your room?”

Duke tripped over his feet on the way to the boys’ dorm and blushed, stumbling into Sam until he grabbed Duke’s elbow to steady him. The campus was quiet and asleep. Duke should be at the hospital or talking to his parents, instead he was tugging Sam along like he’d lose him if he slowed down.

Duke dropped his keys twice before he got the door open. They stepped inside Duke’s room, his roommate, Viola’s brother, was gone. 

“With Viola,” Duke whispered. 

“You can still go see her,” Sam replied, knowing it was futile. He could ask himself why he was here, but he knew the answer. Duke's floundering was too familiar to walk away from. 

Duke pulled his shirt off, flush running down his olive-gold skin, and Sam was there, tipping him back on the bed, chasing any self-doubt out of Duke’s mind with his teeth and his tongue. Duke was quiet, unsure, but the throaty groans he made when Sam swirled his tongue around Duke’s navel made him smile. Sam traced a path over the ridges in Duke’s abdomen with his fingers, and then followed it with his tongue. He had to hold Duke down, his hands on the cut lines of his hips. 

Duke’s nails bit into his shoulder when he scratched across a nipple with the side of his thumb. “Is this what it’s always like?” he breathed. 

Sam colored at the praise and pressed his lips to the hollow of Duke’s throat. “It can be.”

Duke tossed his head on his pillows and arched his hips off the bed so that Sam could pull down his jeans. His eyes were luminous and wondering and his blunt fingertips searched out Sam’s face like Duke was trying to make sure he was real. Sam sucked them into his mouth and Duke’s breath caught audibly in his chest. 

“There are times where I don’t feel like I fit,” Duke said. Sam knew it. That sentence encompassed an entire life. He fit his lips to Duke’s and slipped his hand inside Duke’s boxers. He didn’t know how to tell him it was going to be okay. Was it?

Forget, he said with the pads of his fingers on Duke’s soft skin. Forget, he said with a tight grip around the Duke’s cock. And Duke moaned, soft and strangled into his mouth. He gripped Sam’s shoulders tight, fingers flexing into the muscle, and Sam kept kissing him. Duke tore away, buried his face in Sam’s neck as he got close and Sam started tugging him slow and torturous. There was only this, he hoped Duke understood, and closed even white teeth tight on Duke’s earlobe as he thumbed the head of his cock. Duke strained to stay still, veins and tendons standing out in his arms in sharp relief. 

“I need to—” Duke stuttered and stumbled, his lips bitten red and full, “I need to see you.” He pulled at the frayed hem of Sam’s shirt, eyes blinking shut even as Sam continued to stroke him. Sam nodded, tore his shirt off with one frustrated hand, tossed it amidst the mess of Duke’s clothes on the floor. 

Duke looked at him, unflinching, and came when Sam wrapped his fingers around his dick again. He shuddered with it and trailed loose fingers up from the jut of Sam’s hipbones past his sternum to the tender spot just behind his ear. He blinked, eyes fluttering open and shut, and his muscles flexed before he finally stilled.

Sam lay next to him, shivering just from that whisper of a touch. Can we, Duke asked with his eyes, and the answer was ‘no, we can’t,’ but Sam didn’t say anything. He allowed Duke to pull away his jeans with suddenly sure fingers and roll over him, to straddle his lap. Sam found it difficult to push out every breath with Duke looking at him through that thick fringe of eyelashes, his face lit up orange from the harsh light of the street lamp. 

It was a race for the condom and lube he had hidden in his wallet. Duke kissed him, laughing, and leafed through it. He set IDs down carefully on the bed, rolling his eyes at the names. He was distracting himself, preparing for what came next, even as he rolled his hips down against Sam’s crotch and tried not to blush too hard. 

“If you made all these,” Duke told him as Sam’s lube-slippery fingertips dipped into the groove of his spine and down past his tailbone, “you have shit taste in music.” 

“Dean makes all the IDs,” he said, voice roughened and papery. Over Duke’s shoulder, he could see the Sublime poster tacked carefully to the wall. He pushed a finger inside Duke, all spread out, right over his lap. Duke leaned back on Sam’s thighs, sank further down on Sam’s finger. 

“I can take another,” he stated, all his muscles locked tight against the intrusion. 

“Relax,” Sam wrapped a fist tight around Duke's softened cock. “You shouldn’t brace yourself through this.” He thought back to his first time, twisted up against the wall of supply closet doing his damnedest not to think of Dean, when he couldn’t do anything but. 

He jacked Duke off tight, punishing, trying to get him back into that space, and leaned forward to tongue one flat brown nipple. Duke’s hips stuttered against his hand and he nearly choked on his own tongue when Sam found his prostate. Back bowed in a show of athletic grace, Duke’s shoulders flexed and he grasped Sam’s forearm, stilling it. 

“Just now—already,” Duke bit out. He was hard again, his dick swollen and stiff, sliding up and down Sam’s stomach. It left a pearlescent trail of pre-come up Sam’s abdomen. Sam fit himself against him, kissed him fiercely, and slid inside. Duke growled and leaned forward, nearly knocking foreheads with Sam. 

“Breathe,” Sam reminded, gathering him close. Duke let out a breath, then two, his muscles flexing around Sam. Sam fought with himself to remain still, reminded himself that he was Duke’s first. 

Duke rolled his hips. “Don’t you dare take it easy on me.” 

Sam huffed out a laugh, forehead falling to Duke’s shoulder as his hips snapped up. Duke hissed and dug his knees into the mattress, tightening them around Sam’s hips. His skin prickled with sweat and sensation. What would Dean think if he could see him now? What would he say?

They pushed and strained against each other. Sam tongued between the wings of Duke’s collarbones. Duke’s breath came in hitching gasps, the eyes finally drawing open. He caught Sam’s gaze and it made sense: two people pretending to fit in a world that demanded more than they could give. 

Duke came over Sam’s fist, mumbling and cursing. Sam couldn’t handle what he say in Duke’s eyes, and he looked away. Duke’s thighs tightened around his hips and Sam inhaled sharply. “Are you gonna—” Duke’s breath drifted over his ear and that was it. Sam gave in, he held Duke to him, and came with a strangled cry. He felt it run down his spine, burning in his belly, before sensation erupted in his dick. 

Duke separated from Sam, put distance between them, like he couldn’t take anymore sensation from his overworked nerve endings. He stared up at the ceiling. 

“I fell in love with Viola when I thought she was a boy.” 

Sam blinked. It took a moment to remember the gender-bending craziness that had first clued them into a case here. 

“And then she turned out to be a girl, and I just thought—I thought it made my life so much easier.” 

Sam rolled on his side to look at him. 

Duke choked. “But I can’t—” he broke off and cast a despairing eye around the room.

Sam propped himself up on his elbow. He thought of Jess, and how she would’ve fixed this, talked him into believing in himself again. He said the only thing he knew how to, “I know.” 

“What will my parents say? Or Viola?” he asked, eyes firmly trained on the ceiling. “Oh God, what will the guys on the team say?” 

“I don’t know,” Sam said, honestly. 

“Everything—you know what’s expected of a guy like me? It’s just pulling at my skin, making me feel shredded and restless.” He heaved a massive sigh. “I wish I could get out of this place.” 

Sam chuckled bitterly.

“You have a girl on the boys’ soccer team, you’re their center forward, and they adore you,” Sam replied, leaning over Duke so that he had to look at him. “It’s not as hard as you think it is. We’re not in backwater Alabama, okay?”

“How do you do that? Make it sound like it’s all going to be okay?” he asked. “I just saw my girlfriend hurled out of a window, and I’ve been having crazy psychic visions, and we—” he coughed and waved a hand at Sam suggestively. “You just power right on through it.” 

Sam huffed out a sigh and wished he hadn’t gotten so good at it. He shouldn’t feel so bitter. 

He changed the subject. “Are you going to tell Viola?” 

Duke put his head in his hands. “You think she won’t notice I’m not at the hospital?” 

“Not likely,” Sam said as rolled to his feet and started pulling on his clothes. Duke was lying naked on his wrecked twin bed.

Sam shouldn’t have done it. He really shouldn’t have done it, of all the stupid things, more than getting fucked in the janitor’s closet of a bookstore, more than wanting your brother so badly it hurt to breathe, more than walking away from his degree when he was so freakin’ close. 

But when he looked down at Duke he didn’t regret it. Duke climbed out of bed, suddenly conscious of his nakedness, he pulled a sheet around his waist. They had no words, but he knew the barest tilt of Duke’s lips meant thank you. He nodded, and slipped out of the boys’ dorms. It took him forever to walk the five miles back to the hotel. Dean was cleaning weapons when Sam stepped back through the door, a cup of coffee at his elbow. Sam felt bad for ignoring his cellphone. He felt bad for everything. 

He thought of his senior thesis, nothing but ash in a burned-out apartment. And he couldn’t say “That matters more than this,” because what did matter anymore?

“Where did you fuck off to?” Dean asked. He looked more amused than annoyed. 

“Did you ever ask me what I majored in?” Sam replied, voice sharp. Dean rocked back, like he’d been struck. 

“What?”

“You never did, did you.” Sam shook his head and stripped his t-shirt off. His eyes were far away. 

“I—”

He interrupted Dean, “Ethics, Politics, and Economics.” 

Dean got to his feet. “Sam, I don’t—”

“I was studying the effect of the death penalty as a deterrent to crime.” He shifted his eyes away from the wall, to lock with Dean. “I buried more than Jess to come with you.”


	4. Your Breath Is Ticking Through Me Like A Clock

The shit hit the fan in Astoria, Oregon and Sam found himself alone, on a mountainside in an abandoned ski lodge. He’d worried about Dean, blindly panicking and calling his brother’s name, but he’d given up after his fingers stopped hurting from the cold and his eyelashes felt like they were going to break off. He had to worry for himself instead and he could only hope that Dean was okay. 

He wasn’t sure how everything had gone so totally wrong. Sam always seemed to have the misfortune ending up exactly where he didn’t want to be. 

It was the most low-pressure case they’d had in a long time. One minute everything was stellar, destroying stone runes left by the fey folk, the next he was up to his knees in sleet. He supposed they should have gone in with more care, because the runes were causing some weird shit to happen. People wandering in the wild, up and vanishing, that sort of thing. Dean had thought drug ring maybe, but Sam doubted any drug cartels found Astoria much of a market. Sam was freezing his nuts off well enough to know that if this was drugs, he was on one seriously bad trip. Dean was going to kick his ass. If Sam ever got down off the mountain.

He’d been there for a day already, surviving on snow melt and that chocolate he’d swiped from Dean’s bag. It wasn’t much. He’d gotten a fire going in the lodge, managed to pile three rotting and musty mattresses on top of each other, so at least he wouldn’t die of cold. 

He went out the second day, lungs burning from the cold air, fingers shoved up in his thin jacket and he only managed five feet before he saw the shadow out of the corner of his eye. He froze. 

It was a man, around Dean’s height, standing in snow up to his shins, all in black with his hands clasped behind his back. Sam took one more step, his boot crunching through the snow, and the man turned, gun on him. 

“Whoa,” Sam said and raised his hands. 

The man raised one dark eyebrow. “You have two weapons, one at your hip and the other at the small of your back. Take them out.” 

“I’m not going to shoot you,” Sam protested, as he chucked the two guns out into the snow. 

The man didn’t respond to his comment. “Where are we?”

Sam sighed, looked around at the white snow, and painfully blue sky, and shrugged. “I don’t know.” 

The man lowered his weapon and Sam finally took in the weird cut of his outfit, the leather gloves, and the slicked back hair. He climbed up the incline toward Sam. “You aren’t much in the way of a threat, if they think they’re going to neutralize me.” 

Sam furrowed his brow. “Pardon?” 

“I am John Preston, bodyguard of Councilman Jurgen, and you are?” His voice was almost inflectionless. 

“Uh, Sam Winchester?” 

Preston made a face at Sam. “Have I been kidnapped?” 

“Not by me, certainly,” Sam told him, backing away slowly. 

“It was night when I left,” Preston sucked in a breath and cast his eyes at the sky. “What’s the date?” 

“Um, March 15th, 2006.” 

“What?” Preston scoffed and wrinkled his nose. “It’s nearly 2336! Did you get addled when you came off the dose?” 

“You think I’m crazy?” Sam stopped. He supposed he had no way of knowing if this was still 2006. Maybe wherever they were it was 1845 or 1916 or 20,642. The refuse in the ski lodge didn’t leave much in the way of evidence. The rusted steel bed-frames could’ve been made at any point in the last century or two. “Look, um, Preston, I might have an explanation, but it's going to sound crazy.” 

Preston crossed his arms in front of his chest and waited. 

“There was this fairy ring that was sending travelers awry, I think you might be one of them.” 

“Fairy ring?” Preston’s lip curled. “You sound like my daughter.” 

Sam threw up his hands. “I don’t have time for this, I need to go find food.” He stomped past the other man towards the line of trees. Daughter? Really? Preston looked barely older than Dean. 

Preston’s deep voice gave him pause. “It appears that you believe this very strongly.” 

Sam looked over his shoulder, voice softening. “Because it’s true.” 

Preston breathed in deep and then nodded. “All right.” He ran his eyes over Sam’s form deprecatingly. “But I’m foraging for food.” 

Sam was reading through a musty copy of _Robinson Crusoe_ (the 1964 reprinted edition, and that made him feel better) that was lying next to the fireplace when Preston came back. He dumped three plump rabbits in front of the fire and quickly began skinning them. Sam winced and looked away. 

“The monastery taught us to survive,” Preston told him at Sam’s questioning glance. 

“What?” 

“The tetragrammaton? Father’s arm?” The same look he’d been wearing earlier was back on the Preston’s face.

“Listen, I’m really not crazy! I’m not addled because I came off any dose! I have never taken a dose!” 

Preston made a face and nodded. Sam could practically hear the ‘Okay, Crazyface.’ 

After a dinner of tough rabbit that Sam would not have enjoyed even if it had been braised in wine sauce with a touch of rosemary rather than cooked over an open fire with nothing but its own blood for seasoning, Sam tossed Robinson Crusoe aside. Preston had shucked out of his strange coat, set the tight leather gloves aside, and stoically began making his own mattress out of cushions. They hadn’t spoken a single word over dinner, but Preston’s hazel eyes had been sharp on him the entire time. 

Sam sighed. He could use some physical exertion to take his mind of things, comvince himself that Dean hadn’t been sent to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, and was still walking around just fine, a girl on each arm. He stripped off his thin jacket and started doing push-ups in the cleared space behind the sagging sofa. Preston lay on the ground, staring at the ceiling. His complete lack of engagement was driving Sam nuts. 

He moved through a series of stretches and as the room and lingering thoughts of Dean slid away from him, started the routine his Dad had taught them both nearly two decades ago. Punch-block-feint-punch. He punched his fist through the air and was startled when a firm grip around his wrist brought him to a halt. 

“You’ll get more out of it, if you do this,” Preston whispered, pressed up against his back. Sam hadn’t even seen him move. 

Preston moved around to face him, lips shaped into the barest hint of a smile. He gestured for Sam to come at him. Sam had barely moved a step before he was flat on his back. He pushed himself to his feet and tried again, only to have his legs kicked out from under him. Sam couldn’t get a single strike past Preston’s guard, and he was almost completely on the defensive. Preston’s fighting style was more effortless even than Dean’s. There was certainly more art to it. He dumped Sam on the floor or knocked him breathless several times, before eventually giving in and laughing. 

“You’re tall, one of the tallest I’ve ever seen,” he told Sam as he pulled him up off the floor, bare hands roughened by gun calluses. “But your height is both a help and a hindrance.” 

Sam gasped in air and nodded, looking at Preston from beneath sweat-damp hair. 

Preston stepped in close, palms bracketing Sam’s hips. “You have a much longer reach, but your center of gravity is higher.” His hands skated upwards. “Here.” 

“Well, I can’t shorten my legs,” Sam replied, breathing in deep. 

Preston cocked his head. “No, but you can bring yourself lower to the ground, guard more of yourself.” 

They sparred for an hour, Preston’s suggestions gradually sinking into his skin so Sam wasn’t being tossed around like a rag doll. It was the first time he’d received instruction from anybody who wasn’t his father or brother, both of whom were competent street fighters.

“What are you, some kind of warrior monk?” Sam finally asked when they sat down to take a break. 

Preston opened his mouth to protest and then shut it. “I suppose I was, before the fall of Father.” 

Sam looked at him, expression dutifully blank. 

Preston paused before continuing. “I was a tetragrammaton cleric.” 

“Tetragrammaton,” Sam turned it over in his mouth. “The Greek word for the name of God.” 

Preston jerked and looked up at him. He made no indication that he was surprised at the knowledge, but he changed the subject. “So if I came through the fairy ring, how did you get here?” 

Sam could hear the mocking in his voice. He lunged and tackled Preston, the element of surprise giving Sam just enough edge to overwhelm him. All the air flew from Preston’s lungs as Sam’s weight came crashing down on him. “I was in Astoria with my brother, at a country club, looking at a fairy ring,” he thumped Preston’s chest for emphasis, “and then I was here, next to a ski lodge.” 

Preston grunted and flipped them over. “I had a brother,” he told Sam as he balanced his chin on Sam’s sternum. Sweat-slick skin sticking together. 

“What happened?” Sam asked. Preston was warm and his skin was smooth and the last thing he should be doing was perving on some dude who thought he was completely underpants-on-his-head insane. 

Preston bit his lip. “He was older than me. I went to the Monastery and he went to the mines. I never saw him again.” 

“Er, I'm sorry.” Sam's breathing was getting a little labored now. 

Preston shrugged, but he didn’t roll off Sam. “My daughter will know her brother, things have changed.” 

Preston went to raise himself off of Sam, but Sam stopped him with a hand on his bicep. He looked down at Sam questioningly, like he didn’t know what it meant. Sam ran his hand up Preston’s arm, over his shoulder and to his neck to draw him in for a kiss. It was just the barest press of lips, and then Preston was pulling back, fingertips following Sam’s lips’ path. 

“Have you never done that before?” Sam asked, wonderingly. Preston shook his head. “But I thought—you have children.” 

Preston laughed without humor and levered himself up off of Sam, resting his forearms on his knees. “My wife was assigned to me, we had sexual intercourse twice, it was joyless, uncomfortable, and completely without note.” 

Sam stared at him. 

“When we interrupted the dose and—and things like that,” he gestured at Sam with his hand, “became legal again, I just never had the time.” 

Sam furrowed his brow. “What about your wife?” 

“She was executed, long before the dose ended.” He looked over at Sam and made a harsh noise in the back of his throat. “You look at me with those eyes and that flush on your cheeks and all I want—” he choked and cut himself off. 

Sam looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers and made a decision. He got to his knees, and crawled over to him, tilting Preston’s chin up. “It’s all right.” 

“I can’t—” Sam interrupted him with his mouth, palms flat on his chest. They slumped back on the floor, Preston drawing Sam’s weight between his thighs. It was cold and they rolled clumsily towards the fire, exploring each other with numb fingertips. 

Sam reached inside Preston’s military-issue pants, and eliciting a hiss from Preston. “We weren’t allowed to feel, and I—still some of us must forgo that luxury so that others may have it.” 

Sam bent and pressed a kiss to the raised white line scoring Preston’s neck on his right side. “It’s not true.” Preston’s eyelids fluttered closed. Sam sunk his teeth into Preston’s lip and then his edge was lost. For someone with no experience of love, Preston seemed to know exactly what he wanted. Sam’s arms got pinned up in his shirt when he attempted to take it off, and Preston held him down with one palm and he bit at Sam’s nipples. 

“Jesus Christ.” 

And then they rolled across the floor, struggling against each other, disturbing both hastily constructed beds and sending a rickety shelf to the floor. They pushed and pulled at each other, and Sam ended up on top, arm across Preston’s hips as he sucked the head of his cock into his mouth. Preston bucked and fought and his pupils were bleeding slowly into the blue of his irises. 

And it was like fighting again, only this time Sam had the art and the grace and the inspiration. “You’re allowed to be happy,” he told Preston with two fingers sunk into him and the point of his tongue jabbing at the slit of Preston’s dick. Preston groaned, head lolling back on his neck. It was messy and hard and Preston spoke with his eyes. _Harder, like this, I want—_ and Sam gave.

As Preston struggled against him for release, lungs pumping air in and out, hand tight around Sam’s, there was a message. A lesson to be learned. Sam thrust inside him, once, twice, grinding up against that spot inside Preston. Preston’s lips parted, and he left bruises on Sam’s skin. Bruises that Dean would see when Sam stripped off his clothes. Two more thrusts and he was there, hips locked tight against Preston’s, hand on his dick, stroking him off in time. 

Preston came in silence, eyes wide, and expression frozen still. He buried his hand in Sam’s hair and held his gaze as the aftershocks wore through. And there had only been two people in the world to look at Sam and see beyond the skin and bone and muscle to what was inside. One was dead, the other was taboo. The _other_ had forgotten how. 

Preston stared him through it, down and back to himself, disengaging their arms and legs, to bank the fire and remake the mess of a bed. He rubbed his mouth, and the back of his hand came away bloody. He jabbed at the gash with the tongue, as Sam tried to clean off the smudges of dirt and grime from the floor. He was still tingling and dizzy from his orgasm.

Preston brushed his palm across a mark he’d left on Sam’s chest and looked amazed. His eyebrows creased like he needed to say something, but he turned away, presenting Sam with his back. Sam accepted the silence. It was the first time in a long time Sam hadn’t thought about all he lost, all he’d compromised. 

They were just pulling their clothes on out of necessity when the floor fell out from under Sam and he slammed down onto Dean’s bed as Dean shouted hysterically at someone on the phone. 

He stared open-mouthed at Sam. “Caleb, never mind. I have to call you back.” 

“Um, hi,” Sam said, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. 

Dean looked him up and down, face incredulous, taking in Sam’s half-dressed body. “You disappeared through a fairy ring for thirty-six hours and you managed to get lucky? With what? A wall?” 

Sam laughed, winced at the bruising on his hips and knees, and rolled off the bed. “I had company.” 

“Jesus, I can see that.” Dean glared at him. “She must have been a beast.” 

Sam flicked him off and made his way to the shower. 

“Hey! I’m still pissed at you!” Dean cried, tossing a book at Sam’s retreating back.


	5. If You've Lost Your Faith You Can Have Mine

It was two jobs since Chicago that carried them all the way to the New Jersey Turnpike. Two jobs away from Dad. Two jobs since, two silly simple jobs, and Dean was collapsing, dizzy and pale and so thirsty. 

They thought it was blood poisoning at first. Sam got Dean to the nearest ER as quick as possible, his brother moaning and lolling in the passenger seat. He thought about calling their father, but he remembered what had happened the last time Dean had been taken to the hospital. And he was still bitter. 

He had to half carry Dean into the emergency room, and the nurses had barely laid eyes on him before they were clearing a space for Dean and shoving forms and paperwork at Sam. He camped out with his laptop checking and rechecking everything the doctors said. Blood poisoning made sense. Dean had gotten spiked by a rusty poker earlier in the week, and stubbornly denied it needed stitching. It was stupid, so _stupid._

Sam promised himself he’d make Dean bathe in rubbing alcohol after every hunt if only Dean got through it. The doctors hadn’t been worried, they’d jocularly pointed out that no one had died of septicemia in a long while. Sam picked at his cuticles and sat at Dean’s bedside. There was nothing he could do but watch his O2 sats like a hawk, and make absolutely sure that Dean was aware of the crazy poker game he’d been playing with his life. But the doctors got worried when Dean’s condition didn’t improve. Dean wasn’t responding to the antibiotics, and they shuffled him up two floors out of the ER to his own room. Sam didn’t think this was a good sign. 

A team of doctors stormed in barely seconds after he had been wheeled in to grill Dean about everywhere he’d been and everything he’d eaten and all the substances he’d come into contact with. After taking a short and mostly edited patient history from Sam, they freaked him out by telling him it was surely gastrointestinal bleeding caused by stomach cancer. And then they marched right out again, leaving Sam to sink slowly back into his chair. 

Dean was wan and pale, and damn it, Sam had had to deal with this far too often. There was no way he could fight against cancer, and he couldn’t just find another faith healer, they weren’t advertising in the telephone book. Dean was so delirious at that point that he was muttering about past hunts and calling out to Sam, exhorting him not to worry. What he was saying would’ve sounded perfectly reasonable to any hunter, heart-wrenching but reasonable, and yet from the look on the female doctor’s face, it was perfectly appalling to normal people. 

The three doctors came back with foreheads creased from worry. 

“It’s not cancer,” Dr. Foreman told him. Sam was relieved enough to hear it that he didn’t even get mad at the wasted painful tests they’d put Dean through. He felt like his heart got lighter, but Dean was vomiting regularly and twitching erratically and Sam stood outside his room as the nurses fussed over him. Dean didn’t have the energy or lucidity to even flirt. They were back to square one. Sam couldn’t get up the courage to leave, afraid of what might happen if he so much as blinked. 

He saw Dr. Chase’s reflection in the window to Dean’s room before he heard him walk up. “You and your brother are very close?” Sam turned to the blond doctor who was sipping on a cup of coffee, rings underneath his eyes. 

Sam looked back at Dean, felt his heart being yanked up through his throat. “Yes,” he replied tightly. “It was just him and me growing up, my dad wasn’t really—he wasn’t really…”

Chase didn’t press him. “I don’t have any siblings, I always wanted one.” 

“I haven’t always.” Sam laughed. “He’s a pain in the ass.” 

Chase touched his shoulder. “We’re going to figure out what’s wrong with him.” 

Dean started shouting, cutting their conversation off, and Sam rushed back inside. The doctors all shoved past him, shouting at each other and pulling equipment out of drawers. Blood seeped out over Dean’s lips. He thrased so hard he yanked the IV out. They sedated him and cuffed him to the metal bed frame. Sam had to turn away and cover his face so that they didn’t see the sudden shine of tears. He felt Chase’s hands on him, pulling him away. 

“It’s better if you don’t see this,” the doctor whispered, fingertips gentle on his back. 

Chase let him back in after Dean had settled down again. He had fallen asleep at Dean’s bedside in a stiff-backed chair when a man wielding a cane came bursting in. Sam started upright in his chair. 

“Your brother has had an allergic reaction to the medication we were giving him. At this point, the damage done to his stomach can only be solved by immediate surgery.” 

Dr. Cameron stuck her head around the newest doctor’s shoulder. “It’s a very invasive surgery, there’s a high chance that your brother’s immune system would be compromised, leaving him without the defenses to fight off the infection.” 

“Listen, whatever your brother’s going through is causing irreversible brain damage,” the doctor rebutted, sweeping his cane like he could herd the other doctors back. Sam’s mouth dropped open. The man with the cane plowed on, “We haven’t found any signs of cancer or neurological upset in the brain. But your brother’s stomach acids are leaking into his blood stream. It’s causing hypoxemia— the blood can’t carry oxygen, without oxygen, little bits of the brain die.”

“You can’t know that’s what’s happening!” Dr. Foreman protested. “Look, Dr. House is oversimplifying—”

Dr. House cut him off. “Just look at him, he’s completely non compos mentis,” he nodded at Dean, “with the way he’s going on about demons and iron and car tires we're lucky if there's anything but mush left. That is, if he doesn't have a history of mental illness?” 

The three other doctors winced. Chase watched Sam carefully, waiting for an outburst of some kind. Sam started laughing, and the three doctors looked taken aback. “You think my brother’s mentally ill?” Sam cracked up again. 

“I’m starting to think it's genetic.” Dr. House jerked his head at Cameron. “Can’t you put them both on haloperidol or something, they're traumatizing the sane people.” 

Sam laughed harder when Foreman glared and crossed his arms. The team of doctors watched him with worry. He held up his hands when Cameron asked if he needed anything. “No, no, it’s just—I’m aware of how this must look, but really, when he gets better I’m saving that one.” 

“Not to interrupt what promises to be a disgustingly epic family moment, but I need you to sign off on this surgery.” 

Sam stared him down for a long moment. Dean was sweating and moaning in his hospital bed, arms splayed out. Sam sighed. “If the surgery raises his chances then we do it.” 

“But we haven’t explored all the options—” Cameron spluttered. 

Sam sighed and went to stand next to his brother. “You think I haven’t been going nuts on WebMd? That I haven’t been looking up every differential you come to me with? I know that you have to do the surgery at some point, and now is better than later.” He brushed his thumb across Dean’s knuckles, watching as Dean’s fingers fluttered under his touch. 

Dr. House stared at him for a long moment and then swept out of the room again. “That’s Dean’s attending?” Sam asked as he penned his name on the sheet of paper. Cameron nodded, looking ready to apologize for the House’s behavior. Sam handed her back the paper and pen. “I’m glad.” 

“Look, you should know that—” Cameron started, brushing her hair over one ear. Chase whispered something into her ear and pulled her away. Sam wasn’t sorry. 

He watched in the operating theater for as long as he could handle it before going to get coffee down in the cafeteria. Chase found him down there. 

“You didn’t threaten him with violence or question his sanity.” 

“What?” Sam looked up from where he was ripping an empty sugar packet to shreds.

“Most of Dr. House’s patients loathe him.” Dr. Chase sat down in the remaining empty seat. “He isn’t a doctor because he wants to make people well—they can tell he’s not doing it for the right reasons.” 

“Does he love it?” Sam asked, pushing the wreckage of the sugar packets aside. 

“I—yes,” Chase answered, leaning back in his seat. 

“Then he’s doing it for the right reasons.” 

He could feel Chase watching him over the next few hours as they did their best to stabilize Dean. 

“Do you ordinarily stay with the patient's relatives,” Sam asked, after he went down for his fifth coffee. 

Chase started to say something and then stopped. “No, I—usually that’s Cameron.” 

“Then why?” Sam took a big a bitter scalding gulp of the hospital coffee. 

Chase blinked and brushed a blond wing of hair back over his ear. “Do you want me to go?” 

“No,” Sam shook his head. “I just wondered.” 

Dean came out of the surgery okay, but they still didn’t know what had caused the bleed in the first place. They were throwing out increasingly unlikely illnesses—legionella, malaria, a bizarre strain of the flu. Sam dutifully looked up every single one. He felt completely impotent. Dean was in a battle that Sam couldn’t help him fight. 

Dean’s rare moments of clarity only made it worse. “Let me die, Sam.”

“We haven’t exhausted all options yet,” Sam told him, knuckles tight on Dean’s bedrail. “I’m not willing to give up.” 

He looked up and Dr. House and stood outside the window, leaning on his cane, watching them. Chase was next to him. Sam flushed and dropped his gaze. 

Dean started vomiting again, and the nurses pushed inside the room to get him in the recovery position. Dean’s hospital gown parted over his back, and the nurses’ team gasped. 

“Doctor, you’re going to wanna see this!” a nurse in flowered scrubs called to House. 

The skin on Dean’s back was mottled and purple, but there was a clear outline of a goat-headed man inside a pentagram. Sam could feel his blood pressure drop. The hospital staff looked at him with wide-eyes. There was judgment written all over Dr. House’s face. The remaining members of his team stumbled through the doorway, mouths dropping at the almost artful bruising on Dean’s back. 

“What?” Dean coughed and demanded. “Tell me!” 

Dean was curled in a fetal position. Sam bent over him, whispering in his ear. “We have a hunt.” 

“Listen, we need to take a look at the bruising—”a nurse tried to interject. 

Dean gripped Sam’s hand. “Don’t do it by yourself.” 

The nurses hustled Sam out of the room. He scooped up his bag and sucked in a breath. There _was_ no one else. Dean would have to forgive him. 

“Sam?” Chase’s crisp accent cut through the parade of other voices. “Wait!”

Sam looked back over his shoulder, Chase pushed through the crowd. Sam blew out a breath and raised his eyebrows. 

“They’re debating if it’s self-inflicted in there, or if you—” the doctor cut himself off. He craned his neck to look back at the team standing around Dean’s bed. 

“But?” Sam pushed him, when Chase merely worried his lip and didn’t answer, Sam answered for him. “But you don’t think that’s what happened.” 

“I—that was the sign of—of Baphomet, the Star of Mendes.” Sam took a step back, but Chase’s eyes were far away. “We learned about it in seminary,” he said softly. 

“Doctor, you were—”

Chase interrupted him, “Does that mean—is it real?” 

Sam looked at him for a long moment. He reached out and grabbed Chase by the wrist, pulling him back into the stairwell. “What exactly are you asking me?”

“Demons, the occult, are they real?” Chase whispered like he was afraid to say it out loud. Sam nodded. Chase leaned back against the wall, like his feet wouldn’t support him. “But Baphomet—Malcolm Barber said in his second book that it was all a silly superstition, a corruption of the name Mohammed.” 

Sam shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. People believed in it, it was enough.” Chase looked like his entire world had come crashing down. Sam didn’t have time to sit and walk him through it. “Listen, you said you were in seminary—do you remember any of it?” 

“Like, can I remember _De Exorcismis et Supplicationibus Quibusdam_ off the top of my head?” Chase muttered. 

“He’s not possessed!” Sam sighed. “Listen, I’m wasting time, just say some Hail Marys over him.” He leaped down the steps, leaving an almost comatose Chase behind him. It wasn’t hard to break into the Princeton main library, despite their laughable idea of security. The resources they had weren’t as good as Sam would’ve liked, not much in the way of ecclesiastical or occult texts, but it was better than what he usually had to work with. 

He got back to the hospital just as Cameron was injecting something into Dean’s IV. 

“Do you know where Dr. Chase is?” 

She jumped and nearly dropped the needle. “Sam, you startled me.” She pressed a hand over her heart. “Dr. Chase? I’m fully capable of answering any questions you might have.” 

“It isn’t about that,” Sam told her, frustrated. “Listen, can you just page him for me?”

Cameron made a face and complied, breezing out of the room. Chase showed up a few minutes later. 

“You called?” 

“He looks better,” Sam said simply, clutching tight to a few things he’d picked up before he’d returned to the hospital, it had been a bitch of a time trying to get it through security. 

“I said half the gospel of Matthew, and Hail Mary, and _at least_ eight Pater Nosters over him,” Chase replied, looking a little wild around the edges. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t sure if it worked.” 

“Thank you, you bought me some time.” 

“To do—”

“Not enough time to go into everything,” Sam interrupted. “Listen, can you get Dean into a quiet room where we won’t be disturbed so I can break the curse?” 

Chase ran a hand through his hair and thought for a moment. He looked at Dean’s life signs and set his jaw. “I suppose I can.” 

It took some time for Chase to secure them a room without glass or personnel bustling about constantly, but they dollied Dean off as quickly as possible. Sam quickly set up the candles at five points around the room and Chase fiddled with the cuffs on his lab coat. 

“I’m not really sure I want to be seeing this,” he whispered and plunked himself down in the only chair. 

Sam shrugged and shut off the lights, leaving them in the flickering warm glow of the candles. Chase crossed and recrossed his legs. Sam stood on a table and disabled the smoke detectors, aware of how time was quickly slipping away, and how Dean looked worse and worse with every passing second. He breathed deep, shot one last look at Chase, and climbed down, hoping he’d looked up the right words. With a flick of Dean’s lighter, he lit a small sachet of vervaine he’d set in a bowl. The smoke curled thick and blue, making the room hazy. 

He could feel Chase’s eyes on him as he recited the words written down on a torn sheet of binder paper. Chase had had more than he could quite handle, Sam was just waiting for him to get up and run out of the room screaming. He supposed he should feel bad for peeling the blinders away from Chase’s eyes, but he couldn’t quite manage it. 

“How did this happen?” Chase asked, as he broke off to pass the bowl over Dean’s body. “How do you run into a curse?” 

Sam shrugged. “It happens in our line of work, more often then not. They either fade or they’re broken.” 

Chase blinked. “It all seems so ridiculous, I never—I stopped…” he trailed off and let Sam continue with his recitation. 

“I’ll have another Pater Noster, Father Chase,” Sam said, when he’d finished the last verse. 

“What?” Chase startled. “Oh, right uh— _Pater noster, qui es in caelis: sanctificetur Nomen Tuum; adveniat Regnum Tuum; fiat voluntas Tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra. Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie; et dimitte nobis debita nostra, Sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris; et ne nos inducas in tentationem; sed libera nos a Malo_ ”

Nothing happened. 

“Um…do you need the doxology too?” Chase ventured. 

Sam held up a hand. “Just wait—” There was a shattering sound and a mild concussion, tossing Sam into Chase. They fell to the floor, just barely missing the chair. Chase coughed and curled inward on himself, but Sam ignored him and leapt to his feet to check on Dean. His brother’s eyes were closed and his breathing was regular, a normal color had returned to his cheeks. 

“He’s okay...he's okay,” Sam said unsteadily, hand tight on Dean’s wrist. 

Chase raced over, stethoscope and penlight out to examine Dean. 

“Based on this, I’d say he was one hundred percent normal, but I don’t understand! How is that possi—” Sam cut him off by grabbing his chin and pressing a swift kiss to his mouth. 

Chase made a small noise in the back of his throat, and Sam pulled away. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Chase ran his finger over the swell of his lower lip. “I’m completely losing it,” he whispered. 

“Sorry,” Sam turned back to his brother, brushed a hand down over Dean’s chest, feeling it rise and fall without a hitch. Sam suddenly had to pinch the bridge of his nose to keep from crying. 

Chase’s fingers curled around his wrist, and Sam felt himself get whirled around. Was this the part where Chase smacked him? 

Chase pressed into him, nearly on tip toes to reach Sam’s mouth. They kissed again, Sam shoved back against Dean’s hospital bed, while his brother slept on unaware. It sent a frisson of guilty pleasure up Sam’s spine. He could wake up—he could see them—he could—

Chase stepped back again, looking startled at himself. “We should get him back.” He was breathing hard, and Sam had to hide a smile. 

They kept Dean overnight—the different doctors arguing that there had to be something wrong with him. House demanded a full array of tests, and only a snappy doctor in a low-cut top managed to convince him not to waste money on numerous CT scans. 

Sam finally picked up his stuff to head back to their hotel room. He hadn’t slept in nearly 72 hours other than small uncomfortable naps in the stiff-backed chair. He was just leaving when Chase stopped him. 

“Can we talk?” Chase asked, lab coat forgotten for a camel sports coat and fitted jeans. He looked slender, younger, in the preppy clothing, even though Sam knew that he was at least five years older. Sam looked at the parking garage. 

“Where you headed?”

It was easy to go back to Chase’s house, he was out of his mind with exhaustion.  
Chase boggled at the contents of the Impala’s trunk—guns, ammo, salt canister, more guns, med kit, knives, a few reference texts, and more guns. He reached in and opened the med kit. There was a neat pile of sterile suture cases, gauze, four syringes filled with local anesthetic, a row of pills bottles. Chase laughed in surprise. 

“Dean can stitch almost as neat as a plastic surgeon.” 

Sam took Chase’s bag and laid it on top of the books, and Chase shut the kit. “Why would he need to? You don’t always go to the hospital?”

“Too many questions, hard to defend—my father has a whole list of reasons.” 

When they arrived at Chase’s loft apartment, Sam was surprised. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting—a rack of boomerangs, a didgeridoo, a poster of the Australian outback. Something more ascetic, surely, than the early 20th century antique elegance and vintage French advertisements for umbrellas and wine.

“So, how do we do this?” Chase asked. He poured Sam a scotch and then stared down at his own glass like it was something alien. 

“Sex?” Sam sat on over-stuffed arm of a shiny brown leather couch. 

Chase narrowed his eyes, and tossed back the scotch. “I don’t know why I’m doing this.” 

Sam looked away from him, shoulders collapsing. Chase set the glass aside, and it hit the table with a hard hollow thunk. Sam imagined his brother lying alone amid the beeping machine city, Dr. House manically puzzling over the repaired network of veins and tissue—the steady resonance of his lungs and heart. 

Chase stood in front of him, hip cocked. He was unsteady, rocked by all he’d learned. He grimaced and pressed a hand to his chest, pressing down sharply. Sam knew Chase had hoped home would refill the hollow pit left just behind his heart, gaping ever wider with every shrug of his shoulders. 

He wrapped an arm around Chase’s waist, twirled them across the hardwood into the bedroom, rubber scuff marks from the soles of their shoes betrayed their path. Chase held him, dexterous hands tight on the caps of his shoulders. They fall in his bed, disrupt the perfect world he’s created with his pillows, and his heavy eiderdown. 

Chase seemed baffled by his arousal. He drew in a heavy breath when Sam gripped the shaft and started jerking him off, head slumped against his shoulder, and mouth gaping. 

“I didn’t—” he started, but Sam thumbed the head of his dick, knuckle pressing in just under the crown. 

 

Chase flew apart easy. He shoved Sam off of him, carded an ungentle hand threw his dirty blond hair, and eyed the lavender and periwinkle striped tie that he’d been wearing like he wanted to tie Sam to the bed with it. Sam waited, arm propped up on his on his knee. 

“I’m not sure—what comes next,” he said, eying the bulge in Sam’s jeans. 

Sam unbuttoned them and pushed them off, his shirt had been lost in the mad tussle to get to the bed. Chase reached up Sam’s thigh, fingertips creeping forward, until Sam placed his palm over Chase’s hand, and guided it to his dick. 

They jerked him off together, Sam’s hand wrapped tight around Chase’s fist. When Sam fell back against the pillows, Chase came with him, stroking him until he came. 

Sam was nearly drifting off to sleep when he felt Chase’s gentle hand skate down over the dip of his spine. He cracked an eye open. 

“Sorry.” Chase looked sheepish. “I’ve never been with a man before—if you couldn’t tell.” 

Sam blinked and turned on his side. “Okay.” He waited a beat. “Did you leave seminary to become a doctor?” 

Chase shook his head, and wavered for a moment, like he wasn’t sure he should say anything. “I lost my faith.” 

Sam stayed silent, watching him. 

“But now…” his voice broke, “But now you show me—and I—I failed.”

“No, you didn’t fail,” Sam protested. “You’ve got it all wrong.” 

Chase shook his head like the matter was closed. Sam bit his lip. And like always, there was so much that needed to be said that would never stand to be heard. Chase looked away from him and Sam resettled himself for sleep. When he woke up Chase was gone and there was a small square of white paper on his pillow. 

Sam picked it up and read, _“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” –Ephesians 6:12_

_Be careful, Sam_

He was unsure of what to make of it. When he went back to collect Dean, his brother was full of abuses. The team trundled him out the front door in a wheelchair, trying not to laugh as Dean called Sam an idiot in several different colorful ways. Chase hung back. Sam smiled at him as Dean nearly leapt out of the chair to walk to the Impala. 

“I told you not to do it alone,” Dean said once they were out of earshot. 

Sam pursed his lips. “It was only a simple curse.”

“You know how the backlash on curses can kill people. I can’t believe you were so stupid,” he unlocked the car. 

“I _had_ help, Dean,” Sam shot back. “Dr. Chase was there every step of the way.” 

“Dr. Chase?” Dean asked, brows raised. “The foofy blond one?” 

Sam colored. 

Dean shot him a disgusted look, before rooting around in the grocery bag sitting on the drivers seat for something to drink. “Are you kidding me? Him too?” 

“Oh, just leave it,” Sam grunted and changed the subject, “He said something to me, quoted the bible, Ephesians 6.12.” 

“And?” Dean replied, in between gulps of the ginger ale Sam had bought him. 

Sam got into the car stiffly. “It’s commonly associated with Baphomet—one hand to control white magic, and one hand to control black, to ‘take up the whole armor of God.’”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Dean backed out of the space and started muttering about the parking rates. 

“Dean, what if the curse was some kind of a message or prophecy?” 

“Way to kill the messenger.” Dean made a face and then asked with resigned patience, “About what, Sam?” 

“I don’t know, Dean!” He threw up his hands. “I just—be evil to save the whole world? That seems like a rationale, and surely they didn’t mean…you.” 

“You’re totally reaching.” Dean swung into traffic. “Ask Dad about this whole Baphomet thing if you’re so worried.” 

Sam made a face. He wished he could put the crumpled note in his pocket out of his mind. But like his phantom father, it raised too many questions with errant answers. He felt slightly sick. 

Sam watched Dean adjust his posture in the bucket seat, rolling his shoulders. Sam remembered the ugly mottled pattern stamped over his spine and the blades of his shoulder. He could hear Pastor Jim’s voice in the back of his head from long ago rainy day sermons, “The devil laughed in scorn of honor, and in his envy, left no work of god unspoilt.”


	6. You Are The Action, I Am The Reaction

Sam kissed Sarah more so that Dean would revoke his officially gay status than because he really wanted to. It didn’t make him feel better, not when Dean vacillated between wanting Sam to stay and wanting to put a good stretch of highway between them. They took three small jobs in quick session, barely time to think, but Sam couldn’t forget that conversation in their bleak motel hidden away in Oak Park. 

_“Dean, we are a family, I’d do anything for you.” Sam had tilted his head. “But things we’ll never be the way they were before.”_

_“Could be,” Dean had said softly, clinging to straws._

_“I don’t want them to be.” It had been a hard thing for Sam to say. He’d waited for Dean to ask him why, to push rather than giving in, and he’d sighed. “Dean, I can’t live like this forever.”_

The subject hadn’t come up again. They’d carefully skirted the issue. Sarah, on the other hand, had come up almost five times a day. We could go back, you could visit her, you know you want to. But Sam didn’t want to and it was driving him up the wall. He picked several calculated fights, just to get Dean to talk about something else, and Dean unwittingly hit on the perfect revenge. He hit a new bar every night for a week, going back to a different girl’s place each time. 

He didn’t even return smug and satisfied, just irritable. He went through their entire arsenal cleaning and polishing and sharpening. Sam felt an enormous tension headache building ever greater by the hour. He had to lie on the bed with his arms over his eyes to block out the light to even cope.

Dean tossed him the last of their store of oxycodone and that was the end of Sarah. Sam was grateful, and when Dean decided they had to max out one of their last credit cards on new shocks for the Impala, he didn’t protest. 

Dean spent two days working out in the hot sun with a ratchet and jack, smudged and greasy, with his thin t-shirt in the back pocket of his ratty jeans—the dip of his spine just visible over the waistband. Sam found himself continually distracted by the contract and shift of the muscles in Dean’s back. The sun rid Dean of his paleness, freckles blooming across the tops of his shoulders and the bridge of his nose. 

They were low on cash after that though, and when they tried to use their one remaining card, the shopkeeper had pulled out a pair of scissors and cut it in half. Sam had to dig up a few crumpled ones to pay for the snacks Dean had plunked down on the counter. The shopkeeper had glared at them, keeping them in sight as they walked back to their car. Dean shot Sam a pointed look that Sam knew to interpret as “pool hall,” and Sam used his Treo to find directions to the nearest watering hole. 

The Blue Chalk was a little more upscale than they were used to. Dean’s scuffed brown leather jacket and flannel shirt looked out of place amid colorful glass lighting fixtures, suede-upholstered couches, and mahogany wood finish on the walls. There were four pool tables though, felt barely marked, and the people lining up around them were young urban professionals just waiting to be fleeced. 

Dean grinned and smacked Sam on the back. He thumbed his lower lip and went off to a group of girls, who had the sleeves of their blouses rolled up, and half full mugs of beer at their elbows. Their eyes lit as Dean pushed his way into the cloud of estrogen. 

Sam looked away. There was a row of empty seats at the bar, and he swung his laptop bag up on the counter and ordered himself a fruity ice tea. The coffee shop next door had a free network set up, and Sam connected to it. They didn’t have a case, and he didn’t want to spend his few quiet hours researching one. The University of Chicago Press had published some new theories about political autonomy and utilitarianism that he was interested in reading. He still had access to JSTOR, their internet resource, through his Stanford e-mail address. 

Dean came back after forty-five minutes with a fatter bill fold than he’d started with. Sam shook his head. He looked back at the women Dean had left behind, they were flushed and giggling, collars loosened. Sam blew out a breath, and focused back on the screen. 

“Hey, how are you doing?” Dean asked. “I was watching from over there, you’re not working on a case are you?” 

Sam raised a brow, propping his chin on his fist. “Dean, you never ask me how I’m doing.” 

Dean made a face. “Yeah, well I’m asking now.” 

“I’m good,” Sam said with a smile, and scrolled down the article page. He caught the girls looking over at them, interested grins on their faces, and Sam shot Dean a quick look. A few months back three girls that Dean had been flirting with had asked for Sam to come along with, Dean had happily extended the offer. Three, check it, _three_ chicks who wanted to sleep with him, there was little he wouldn’t say no to. Sam had firmly told him no, though. He couldn’t—do that, not with Dean. The way the girls were looking at them now, he almost wondered if the same thing had happened, but Dean didn’t give any indication. 

He nodded at Sam, face blank, and turned away to try to order hot wings. The bartender blinked at him and told him they had chili-fried calamari and tempura goat-cheese. Dean made a face, but ordered calamari with a heavy dark German beer. He raised his tankard to Sam and then went back to the women. They cheered when Dean joined them again, and Sam rolled his eyes.

“He always like that?” 

Sam looked to his left. “Hmm?” There was a slender young guy in a rumpled Armani suit nursing three fingers worth of whiskey to his left. “Oh, him? Yeah, pretty much.” 

The guy tossed the whiskey back and asked, “You been friends a long time?” 

Sam remembered the fake names they’d been using that week, different last names. “Yeah, since childhood.”

“How do you stand it?” he asked, smile lightening the sting of the question. 

“Different interests,” Sam stated with a shrug. 

The man laughed and offered his hand. “I’m Jeremy.” 

“Sam,” he replied and shook Jeremy’s hand. 

“You a student?” 

Sam stilled for a moment, before answering, “Yeah, I am, taking a year off.” 

Jeremy nodded. “I graduated in ’05—wish I was back.” 

“Oh, yeah? What do you do?” 

“I’m a trend analyst for a little start-up.” Jeremy made a face. “It’s painful, hard work that hardly pays, but we’ll get somewhere someday.” 

Sam nodded. He noticed that Jeremy had really nice ears, they sort of made him look like an elf, and long eyelashes. And who did that remind him of? “I’m sure you will.” 

“So what brings you here? Or are you from here?” he leaned his head on his fist. 

Sam laughed. “No, I’m from Lawrence, Kansas, but I’m here for research.” 

“Yeah?” Jeremy gestured at the bartender for another. “What are you looking at?” 

Sam struggled to come up with a lie, but Jeremy had had just enough drink not to notice Sam’s pause. “I—I’m a botanist, I’m looking at the trees.” 

“Trees?” Jeremy chuckled. “Mmm, and your friend?”

Sam looked back at Dean, only to find his brother’s eyes on him. Dean looked away quickly, but Sam faltered nevertheless. “He, uh, he lives around here. So we hooked up.” 

The song changed to the heavy guitar intro of “Money For Nothing.” Sam looked up like it would help him listen better. He didn’t turn around, but he knew his brother was cringing. “Dean hates Dire Straights.” 

When he looked back at Jeremy, the other man was staring at him with a bemused look. Sam shifted his eyes down at his iced tea, and Jeremy’s entire face was really rather elfin, he thought. He fiddled with a few of the keys of his laptop and sighed. 

“Listen, Sam?” Sam picked uplifted his head. Jeremy fiddled with the button on his cuff. “Do you, maybe want to get out of here?” 

Sam swallowed and looked back at Dean. His brother was highly engrossed with an exotic-looking brunette. He was leaning on the table, pool cue held in hand, while she leaned into him. Sam nodded. “Yeah, I think I would.” 

Jeremy stepped down from his stool. He barely came up to Sam’s chest. He gestured toward the exit with his head, and Sam put his laptop back in his bag and unplugged his power source. He followed Jeremy to the door, they were just about to step out into the chill night air when Dean called after them. 

“Sam!” 

He spun back to look at his older brother, who was pushing through the crowd, brunette completely forgotten. 

“What’s up?” Sam asked. “I didn’t forget any—”

“Don’t go home with him,” Dean interrupted. 

Sam was shocked. “Uh, I—what?” 

Dean stepped in closer, hand coming up to grip Sam’s elbow. “Sam, don’t go home with him.” It was the closest Dean got to begging. Sam didn’t know what he wanted or why.  
“Dean, I—” Dean’s grip tightened around his elbow and Sam looked down. 

“Just, don’t,” he whispered. 

Sam shook his head and turned around, Jeremy was already gone. Sam felt annoyance crawling up the back of his throat and creeping into his brain. He shook his head bitterly and snapped, “What is wrong with you? My ‘official’ gayness bother you?” 

Sam pushed the door open, out of the bar, leaving Dean behind. He expected Dean to shrug and go back to the pool tables, but he followed after Sam. 

“Don’t put words in my mouth.” 

Sam shouted over his shoulder. “Well hey, if you ever feel like explaining yourself, please step up to the plate.” 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Dean stomped after Sam. 

“Speak a language I can understand!” Sam shot back. Dean shoved him back against the Impala, one hand sliding around his throat. His eyes were wild, and Sam watched his fist nervously. “Hey, you know, that wasn’t quite what I—”

Dean kissed him, thumb smoothing over his Adam’s apple, and hips pressed tight to Sam’s. Sam inhaled and pressed limp against the car. Dean pulled back. “You—you—in my hospital room!” 

“No, no I didn’t—” Sam protested, but Dean interrupted him with more pressure around his throat, and the return of his lips to Sam’s. 

“You thought about it,” Dean pressed, tongue sliding wickedly against the jut of Sam’s lower lip.

“It doesn’t matter, Dean,” Sam answered, voice ragged. Every place that Dean’s body touched burned with sensation. 

Dean leaned away from Sam, just pinning him with his pelvis. “You weren’t supposed to want it. Sam, it’s not—” 

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Sam growled, hauling him in with a hand in his pocket. Dean made a noise in the back of his throat, and dug his fingers into Sam’s hair, pulling to tilt his head for another harsh meeting of mouths. Sam’s grip on Dean’s ass tightened, and he pushed his other hand under Dean’s leather jacket. His brother was solid and warm, and Sam pushed the tips of his fingers through a hole in the seam of his shirt, nails grazing skin. Dean hissed and jerked, shoving him harder into the door. Sam tried to mold his body around his brother’s. 

Everything, everything, right here, the reason he’d walked away and the reason he’d walked back again rolling his hips into Sam’s, trying to own his mouth, just strong enough that Sam couldn’t enjoy his usual control. He was so hard it hurt, and Dean was making a sound that had him arching away from the car, trying to gain friction against his dick. 

It was too much. The silk of Dean’s lips on his, the sharp bite of his teeth, Sam had to rip his mouth away and lean back against the cool metal of the car just to breathe. Dean was sucking in air like his lungs were on fire, and Sam swallowed, lashes fluttering. The sky was foggy, overcast, made reddish and Dean’s skin took on a strange cast when he blinked up at his brother through half-lidded eyes. Sam didn’t know what was going on, not really. But Dean pressed a thigh down over Sam’s dick and bit savagely at his lips.

“Ah, God, I should have let you go with him,” Dean muttered against the thin skin just under his jaw, but he was tugging Sam away from the car door by his belt loop, and unlocking it and shoving him inside. “Get in the fucking car.” 

Sam watched his brother fumbling to unlock the car, and smiled. Dean climbed in on the other side, and had barely stuck the key in the ignition before he got distracted by the long column of Sam’s neck. Sam let him do it, he wanted it all, anyway that Dean would let him. He felt scrambled and incoherent, reaching for a lifeline to sanity, and tangling himself up in the scent of his brother’s skin. It was wood smoke and slate just curling under the scent of Dean’s cologne, the same way something dangerous lurked just behind the fine bones of his face and the burnished sweep of his eyelashes. He was just this side of risky to have girls pushing their panties down their thighs, and not enough to stop them from taking him home with them. 

They twisted together on the bench seat, Sam sprawled on top of Dean, hands up his shirt, moving over scarred skin with a purpose—teasing Dean’s nipples to hardness. It didn’t seem real. Dean’s thighs bracketed his hips and his lungs pumped desperately. “Oh, God, wanna fuck you, Sammy,” he breathed. 

“Yeah? You think you can?” Sam asked, pulling his mouth away from Dean’s collarbone. Dean glared up at him, and heaved him off, detangling their legs. 

“Don’t test me, Sammy.” 

“No?” Sam asked, voice choking with a grin. He ran a finger down the lobe of Dean’s ear, enjoying Dean’s answering shudder. 

Dean grabbed his hand and shoved it away. He narrowed his eyes at Sam. “You stay on that side of the car, no touching until we get the motel, and while we’re driving, I want you to think about exactly what I’m going to do to you when I’ve got you pinned under me.” 

Sam slowly moved over to his side, and closed his eyes, teeth worrying his lip. Dean got the engine started and pulled out of the parking lot. Sam felt Dean’s eyes on him though, so he tipped his head back and slid his palms down over the tops of his thighs and moaned. 

There was an audible click as Dean swallowed. He revved the engine when Sam palmed his dick, and Sam’s eyes popped open. Dean was gripping the steering wheel hard, his knuckles were clearly delineated against bloodless flesh. Sam could feel his gaze burning on the line of Sam’s hips just above the top of his jeans, and the clench of his spread thighs. Sam’s hips lifted of their own accord, and he moaned again, throaty and low, and God, he would’ve been embarrassed if he’d been with anybody else. Dean stripped that away.

They pulled into the shitty motel that had been home for the last three days, and Dean climbed out of the car, like he was trying to restore himself to a state of calm dispassion. Put a hold on the immediacy and some distance between them. Two steps forward, and then ten steps back. Sam had been playing hopscotch with his brother for too long. Sam wouldn’t have it, not if he had to steal it from him with the sweep of his tongue and the edge of his nails. Dean could suck it. Literally. “Don’t back down on me now, man,” he whispered and smoothed his palm over his thigh. 

He was surprised by Dean coming around the car. He paused to look and was gratified to see that Dean couldn’t quite summon up the mask, it was deteriorating around the edges. He tugged Sam out of his seat by his collar, one button popping loose and pinging on the metal. Dean didn’t even check to see if it left a scratch, just kissed him again, mouth sweet like maraschino; one of those girls must have bought him a drink. Dean pushed his tongue between Sam’s lips. Sam made a small sound of encouragement and stepped further into his brother’s space. 

They backed towards their room, number 15, and they tripped over the curb, falling back hard on one of the building supports. Sam threw his hand up to protect the back of Dean’s head, as the rest of his weight came crashing down. 

“Mother—Sam! You weigh a fuckton,” Dean gasped and then muttered, “never would’ve been like this with a chick.” 

“Mmm, couldn’t do this, then.” He hoisted Dean up by his thighs, ‘til they were on level, and pressed himself between them. 

“Oh, oh, Jesus.” Dean threw his head back against the wall. “Put. Me. Down.” 

Sam scraped his teeth over Dean’s pulse, and lowered him. “Ah, all right, but we’re exploring this later.” 

Dean shoved him back, hand flat over Sam’s heart. Sam fished the keys out of Dean’s front pocket, fingers just brushing the hard line of his cock. Dean flexed, muscles tightening, and Sam grinned impishly, dimples showing. He twirled them around his fingertip and went to open the door. Dean came up behind him, arms around Sam’s hips, and tongued the patch of skin bared by his collar. The key missed the lock. Once, twice, he tried. Dean was already pulling buttons free from their holes on his shirt. 

Sam shivered when Dean shoved the fabric of his undershirt up his stomach, calloused fingers brushing sensitive skin. Sam laid his palm flat against the door and drew in a long breath.

“Could fuck you right here,” Dean told him, lips on the ridge of his spine. 

Sam squeezed his eyes shut tight, and allowed himself to imagine it. “You could have me anywhere.” 

Dean moaned, head dropping to rest between Sam’s shoulder blades. His hand came up and tightened on Sam’s wrist, sliding the key in the lock. The door fell open under their combined weight. Dean steered Sam with a hand on the small of his back, pushing him back on Dean’s bed. The maid-service hadn’t come today, and the rumpled sheets still smelled like him, and the prick of his cologne. Sam’s limbs splayed everywhere: Dean settled between his spread thighs, hands digging into the strong muscle as he pulled Sam’s hips up to meet his. 

Sam’s eyes were hooded, his head tipping back at an impossible angle as Dean hauled his pants down, fingernails grazing skin and leaving white lines behind. Dean laughed at the sound that forced its way out of Sam’s throat. “Is this what you’re like for all of them, or just me?” 

“Don’t mock me,” Sam replied, shoving a hand between their bodies to grip Dean’s erection. “What’s this, Dean?” Dean jerked and swallowed, hips rolling into the Sam’s hand. 

“When I walked around with the bruises and the hickies and the scratches they left, you could’ve said something.” Sam was stern. “You didn’t have to force me out, but that’s what you do best.” Sam could feel Dean’s cockhead forced tight against denim, and he pressed into it. 

“God, you—” 

Sam stopped him with the soft clamp of teeth on his throat. Dean shook, muscles beyond his control. He moaned and rolled off Sam, his swollen lips and high cheek bones soft in the diffuse light of the moon filtered in from the window. Dean pushed his jeans down his legs, hissing as his fingers came in contact with his dick. No underwear. Sam was still wearing his unbuttoned shirt, and soft gray boxers that had been black many washings ago. He shrugged out of his shirt, dragging the fabric over Dean’s skin, skimming Dean’s nipples. 

He felt a wet patch at the front of his boxers spread, pre-come sliding down his skin, at the look on Dean’s face. Sam had to close his eyes for a second. Dean tugged Sam down to lie on top of him, feel his weight. There was fire burning in Sam's belly, pulling at his skin, singeing the pads of his fingers when he touched Dean. He’d felt empty for so long, and he’d tried so hard to find someone to fill the Dean-shaped space up. But Dean left an impressive gap. 

Sam kissed him, large palm swallowing half of his face, thumb pressing into the curve of bone just below Dean’s eye. 

Dean wrenched his mouth away. “You gonna let me fuck you?” he asked, voice frayed. 

Sam propped himself up by his elbows. “You gonna make it good?” 

Dean hit him hard in the center of his chest, palm flat. The force was enough to send Sam rolling off him. “I told you not to test me.” His dick met Sam’s, only worn fabric separated skin from skin. 

“You think I’m not gonna, then you don’t know me.” Sam struggled for breath. Dean wasn’t going to have to fuck him, all he had to do was drape that powerful body over his own, and Sam was already there. 

“Oh, I know you,” Dean growled, yanking Sam's boxers down. Sam whimpered they dragged over his dick. Dean wrapped a tight fist around him, and leaned in close, right next to Sam’s ear. “I know where you live.” 

Sam's eyes rolled back in his head, and he pulled his legs up to bracket Dean’s thighs. “Do it then.” 

Dean pushed two fingers inside of him, no preamble or warning, lube borrowed from Sam’s wallet. A high pitched noise caught in Sam’s throat. Dean’s fingers curved up, found his prostate and drove against it. Sam twisted from the sensation, his cock jumping. Dean laughed again and laid his teeth into the skin just above Sam's hip. Sweat beaded on his chest, on the hair at the nape of his neck, running down his skin, itchy and uncomfortable. 

Dean added a third finger, sliding in and out, quickly, viciously hitting that spot. Sam’s eyes were squeezed tight. If he saw Dean's face right now, it would all be over. 

“That all you got?” he whispered. “That all there is to you?” 

Dean snorted, pulled his fingers free, and shoved inside, dick impossibly hard. Sam didn’t remember him putting on the condom, had he? It stung and burned, the intrusion making his eyes prickle with tears, and his muscles lock up. Sam felt absurdly full, but the heat, and slide of Dean’s skin across his inner thighs slowly brought him back to himself. 

Dean froze, muscles trembling, “Have you—”

“Once,” Sam told him, voice tight with strain. “And then, never again.” 

Dean smoothed a hand down his arm. “But after Astoria, those bruises—”

“I got them—mmm—from this.” Sam arched against him, tugging on Dean’s buttocks, fingers sunk into his skin. 

“Christ, Sam,” Dean whispered, head dropping between his shoulder blades. His touch softened. Sam felt something burn away. Jealousy. “Oh, Christ,” he repeated, voice broken. He felt Dean get harder, fuller inside him. 

“Don’t come yet,” he begged, knees squeezing Dean’s hips. He reached down, nails digging into flesh, and drew Dean deeper inside of him, cock head right on his prostate. Dean gargled, muscles spasming under Sam’s hands. “Thought you were gonna fuck me,” he said, before clamping his teeth down over Dean’s earlobe. 

Dean exhaled, before pulling out and slamming back in. Once, twice, three times. Sam felt his inhibitions being torn away from him, mumbling how good it felt, how much he wanted it, how much he needed it. 

Dean answered with grunts and long drawn out moans, when Sam tightened his muscles around him, giving as good as he got. Dean’s abs ground down on his dick, sweat and pre-come making it slick. He felt so full it felt like his heart was gonna burst. Dean came first, his eyes open and staring right at Sam. 

Sam was right there, hanging on the edge, too much sensation fizzing through him. Dean took his dick in hand, and continued to push into him, fucking him even as he softened. 

“Ah—Dean,” Sam moaned. 

“Tell me what you need, Sam.” He nuzzled Sam’s ear with his nose. 

“You,” Sam replied, voice a ragged mess.

Dean wrapped his hand around Sam’s wrist, pressed into the pillow. “Then do it—come.” 

Sam gasped as Dean’s cockhead hit his prostate one last time, and gave it up. He climaxed with Dean’s name branded into his skin, pressure bursting and pulsing through him. He held Dean inside him until he stopped trembling with the aftershocks, jizz sticky on both their stomachs. They laid there, Dean half on top of Sam, half on the bed. Sam wasn’t sure what happened next. He hadn’t missed the significance of being on Dean’s bed, but Dean could still get up and go to the other one. Leave him there. It would drain Sam dry, leave him weightless and unbalanced. 

“Sam, you remember Chicago?” Dean asked and Sam furrowed his brow and nodded. “You asked me what I wanted after the demon was dead, and I said—” he paused, folding the paper up and setting it aside. “I said I wanted nothing, but I lied.” 

Dean didn’t get up. 

*


End file.
